Samsara: The Child
by Miss Slaughter
Summary: The caves were black rock, damp and ominous. Gaping like mouths to some unknown depth. There was a terrible dank chthonic stench speaking of ancient beasts and the promise of the abyss. This place had the smell of the dead about it.
1. Prologue

Part One: The Child

Prologue:

It didn't start straight away: it developed over time, like a nurtured seed it grew thick and strong like a pulsing knot in her chest. It seemed she had forgotten the initial tragedy, it returned to her over time in brief and violent sensory flashes.

Haunted by sounds, smells, tastes. Fractured memories of one night, no more than a few hours buried deep and painstakingly in the wilds of her subconscious and now emerging like a lotus from the silt of a swamp.

The night her father was murdered.

Alex Burrows hadn't really known her parents, both lost to tragedy. Alex Burrows was a runaway, a street kid, more at home amongst the flotsam and jetsam than a three bedroom house in suburbia. It was curiosity that had lead her to this quest, to find out what had happened that night, why her mind was filled with the memories of howls, bloodstains and smoke.

Though this pursuit rapid and seamlessly mutated into other things...

Thirteen. It was the year of her introduction to the Night. Now on the cusp of her nineteenth birthday Alexandra Burrows was crouched between two garbage cans, her heart thundering treacherously in her chest.

"I can hear you, little girl, I can hear your heart beating." The man's voice grew hoarse, guttural, unnatural. It was the voice of a man becoming a beast and the stench was of an otherworldly creature in the throws of the Change.

She bit her lip, holding her breath, forcibly slowing down the wild beating of her heart. She squeezed her eyes shut tight trying to control her human parts.

"Thump thurrump thump. Mmm."

A rat scurried between some trash and she heard the wolf grunt and pick up its nose to test the air. The scents of the city confusing its senses momentarily. Her lips moved in silent prayers as she endeavoured to make herself as compact as possible. One, two, three...

The creature revealed itself, part man, part wolf and gloriously grotesque. She was fascinated and repulsed, her eyes opened wide to soak in the sight of it and those teeth, too many of them, leered and chattered the syllables of her imminent death.

"Hold it right there, you ugly son of a-" The echo of the gunshot obscured the curse.

Alex fell back from the impact, warm, sticky blood and viscera painted her face and chest as the shape shifter was cleaved in two by the bullet. Short, shallow breaths of fear escaped her.

"You okay, darling?"

A scream was stuck in her throat so she couldn't speak. Eventually Alex climbed to her feet, wiping the creature's vital fluids from her cheeks as she gave a quavering reply. "I can take care of myself."

Cal Radford gave her a significant look up and down and then looked away abruptly, busying himself with concealing the Remington 12 gauge. "Sure."

Whilst he had his eyes averted she began to wipe remains from her jacket which had darkened significantly with werewolf blood.

"When did you get back? You never told me you were in town. I could have picked you up from the airport. What are you doing out here this late?" Cal bombarded her.

"I told you-"

"You can take care of yourself?"

"Yes." Even as she replied the pill bottle rolled out of her hands and knocked the toe of his boot. He picked it up the bottle of Ziprasidone, rattled it around to hear a chorus of pills still inside. She snatched it from his hand and began to march away.

"You're welcome." He called after her.

Even as she marched, each angry step brought her closer to civilisation, the bright lights of the street beyond and the adrenaline leaking away a dull ache wedged itself behind one eye. She began to drag her feet as the ache turned to dread and the dread turned to a vicious slither of whispers.

It was how it began. Just a slither. Then the cacophony. A dozen voices fighting to be heard at once, a myriad of odd languages, tones and textures leaving her nauseous and confused. Schizophrenia they called it.

The voices were tempting and organic, they guided her with sighs and cries bending and stretching her body until she had to stop, leaning on the window of a greasy strip joint, trying to gather her wits as the voices softened and the last insidious whisper ricocheted through her skull.

"You okay kid?" A passer by asked.

She muttered something and stumbled away from the curious strangers. They would all look. They would look and see a punk, a junkie, another nobody on the street. Smeared in blood and dirt and other things they could not comprehend.

It took thirty dizzying minutes to get back to her cheap one bed hotel room in the Tenderloin. It was her refuge when she came to stay in the city. Her bags were still packed. Dirty laundry festering neatly on the inside. Her map of the world taped to the wall, strategic points pinned over the continents where she'd been and where she was going.

She had just returned from Japan, she had barely time to set her feet on the ground when she had to run to get her pills. She had travelled through Harajuku where she had found a fugitive monk who had been rumoured to have some information she was highly interested in.

That was her job, to find information.

That night she curled up on the crummy mattress, clutching her bottle of pills, she had swallowed some dry and let the chemicals consume the last cobwebs of consciousness from her.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Sunlight invaded the grimy room through the moth bitten holes in the curtain. Alex groaned using her arm as a shield, wanting to retreat back to the dreamless, perfect blackness of sleep. The day invaded her senses. She sat up, defeated, her pill bottle clattering to the floor.

She parted the holy curtains and was startled by an enormous crow. It cocked its head at her before launching off of the stout window sill and disappearing into the bright sunshine.

She stumbled to the bathroom, shedding layers of pungent thrift store clothes as she went. Her skin was caked with dirt and blood from rolling around in the Tenderloin. She spared half a thought to the 'wolf carcass as she slid under the dribble of the broken down shower head.

The note was pushed under her door, she would have found it sooner but she spent the better half of the hour under the trickle of lukewarm water, scrubbing at her skin until it was red raw, pulling at her hair until tainted blond strands ran down the drain.

The envelope was not something she'd expect to receive, it appeared like a lover's note, expensive paper, creased just so and sealed with red wax.

She broke the seal carefully but found there was a brief message inside and a thin sheaf of paper, it fluttered delicately to the ground. It was an old newspaper clipping. It had been fourteen years since the page had featured in several thousand copies circulating around the greater London area in 1994.

It clinically detailed the death of her father.

Alexander Burrows had been freelance investigative journalist. He had, in his prime, exposed some of the most notorious crimes and scandals that had plagued London: from the fraud of preachers to the sale of diseases on the black market and chemical warfare amongst government neo-Nazi insurgents.

But it was the Night World that would mean his end.

She was a child when They came. She could still recollect the stench of the petrol fumes and magic as she woke in her bed. The lace of her blanket tickling her cheeks. _Daddy?_

"Alex?"

She looked up from her memory, crumpling the newspaper clipping in her fist, to find Cal staring down at her. His expression was one of sober concern. "Alex. Is everything okay?" When she didn't reply he pushed past her, heading toward the cheap plywood chair tucked in the corner of the room. "Do you want coffee or tea?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Bought you some breakfast."

When his back was turned she slumped against the wall, her body overwhelmed with the vivid memory and too many emotions. She grew dizzy, each second giving rise to the insidious whispers, she made an unsteady path toward the bathroom.

She clung to the edge of the sink with a white knuckled grip to steady her nerves before she wrenched open the medicine chest. Fingers reaching through a field of prescription medicines to grasp the right bottle.

Her hands shook. _Daddy?_ Helpless tears of a helpless child. She had been expecting her father to come obediently through her half-opened door with a glass of water in one hand. Instead she counted the gnarled twisted shadows of men march past her door. Thudding footsteps.

The sound of tearing fabric, splitting wood and rattling of junk being sprayed carelessly about a room. Tearing fabric or tearing flesh. Splitting wood or splitting bone. Blood, like ink spurting from a pen, staining the inside of the Burrows' study.

She heard the cry of a wolf.

"Goddess. Damn it." Cal howled from the bedroom.

She struggled with the safety cap. Frustrated, she threw the pills in the sink and listened to them rattle down the pipe. She ducked her head, breathing deep to calm her nerves, to soothe the tumult of voices and memories.

Breath in, breath out. One, two, three...

Cal was staring at her from the door way. Startled, she spun round. "What are you doing here? I want you to go. I never invited you in."

"It's been three months, I thought we could catch up."

"We're not friends."

"Don't kid yourself." He smiled, not phased by her tone or posture.

She closed her eyes. Shivering again, shivering in a memory, huddled between the porcelain tiles and cold pipes of the sink, the lacy blanket stuffed into her mouth to stop her from screaming. Thick black smoke invading every part of their little flat, hiding inside her vulnerable little lungs, hiding her in a toxic embrace.

She put a hand over her mouth as if she could protect herself from the fumes. The rough fabric of haz mat gloves, tearing at her blanket, tearing her from her home. _There's a little girl here, sir. Can you hear me, sweetheart? It's all right, we need to leave. Let's get her out._

Cal approached her slowly, he reached a hand to gently touch her face, his callused fingertips rough on her cheek bringing her back to the present. "You're a cold hearted bitch." He spoke tenderly and as if his chosen words carried condensed eons of perfect poetry.

She didn't respond and he stepped back with a long heavy sigh. Feeling suddenly self conscious, running fingers through her half-wet uncombed hair she turned her back on him. The cunning magic weaver. He'd steal her soul with his flesh if he could.

"Anyway." He left the bathroom. "I have those things you wanted."

*

Alex had come across the name, Cal Radford through chance. He was once a mythic creature

haunting the golden state, a pedlar of magical tricks and treats.

It had taken months before she would track him down to a private basement club in Chinatown. He was a male witch, a rarity in the Night and rarer still because he had no Circle to cosset him. He was a street punk, a drug dealer, a magic dealer to the Day, dealing in Mysteries - the hottest drug in the Night, forbidden to mortals.

She had been fifteen, smaller, lithe enough to climb through the broken window of a abandoned restaurant, find the hidden stair case in the larder and tip toe through a labyrinth of intimate nooks and crannies that made the Night club.

Her senses were guided through the stench of magic, wading through veils of the sickly sweet stuff. Their eyes met. His eyes the colour of jade, wide and guileless, almost like a child. He smiled from where he sat, shirtless, sprawled on a couch rivulets of blood running down his tattooed chest.

The smile fell from his face the instant an icy hand closed around her throat.

The woman was a glorious sight, in fire engine red: boots and nothing else. Her bountiful tresses of black hair twisted on top of her head, lips the same rich colour of her boots. Her grip was as cruel as her eyes and when she spoke, tongue slithering by Alex's ear, her voice was pure sex. _Tasty Little Snack._

Alex's mouth worked in paroxysms of panic though she could not speak nor even breath from the vice like grip on her throat.

_Stop._

*

"Stop," Cal smacked her reaching hands, pulling the grocery bag closer to him so he could sort through its contents. "I'll need to explain the ingredients to you one by one."

The paper bag crammed full of odd smelling things. Some contained in packets, others in vials.

She had studied some herb lore in Egypt and had spent time in Spain with sorcerers who specialised in stones and jewellery. Witches simply thought humans were stupid, incapable of deep thought and discovery. They had tolerated Alex, treating her as if she were a simple child admiring the patterns and mortars in which they wove their spells.

Cal was different from the other People. He didn't look down on human beings, or if he did he never belied these feelings to Alex.

"Quassia chips, thistle, mandrake root." He said laying them on top of her bed spread. "These are your main ingredients. Now I hope you understand, this is no small trifle as far as spells go. If anyone were to find out I were telling you this I'd be executed no questions asked."

The nature of his business had always meant a death sentence. He had shunned the Circles at an early age, his appetites had run wild and beyond the rules that constricted Practitioners. He knew secrets and now he sold them.

She hadn't told him why she needed the spell. There was little she told him, not fully able to trust who he'd sell the information to. The Night was a complex network not just of the People but of humans. There were numerous factions, police to police the police and so forth.

Alex survived them by living off the grid, she had no official paperwork in the Day. The last piece had been the fabricated certificate of her death recorded in London, England soon after her father's death.

She paid local vampire gangs around her hideaways to keep her business a secret from the Night and the few other contacts she did have would not brag about dealing with her. Cal was different but then Cal knew very little about Alex. Though he knew her father had died violently, she had not told Cal who had killed him. She had known the culprit for years now.

Her father may have been ripped apart by the claws of a skin walker or the teeth of a blood drinker but it was a demon who had murdered him.


	3. Chapter 2: Memento Mori

Chapter Two:

Time always flew when she was in San Francisco. Time wasn't a luxury for a mortal. "I'm going to be late." Alex drummed her fingers on the roof of Cal's beaten up truck.

Cal's muffled response came from where he was hidden under the hood, tinkering with the engine. "I'm doing the best I can."

She had a dinner appointment on Powell Street and they were cutting it fine as it was until Cal ran into car trouble and had to pull to one side. He had cancelled his other commitments when he offered her a ride across town and she had accepted because she was still jet lagged and shaken.

"Can't you just-" she wiggled her fingers in the air to indicate magic.

He glared at her, cheeks now streaked with engine grease. "It would help if you could just keep quiet now, darling."

"Fuck it, I'll walk."

"Alex, come on." He called after her but she had walked out of his sight. She had to keep this appointment, it wasn't something she could just shuck off. She wouldn't want to think what would happen if she simply didn't turn up.

She should feel bad for leaving Cal without company but her heart was hammering in her chests she felt as much at risk as having that stray mutt sniffing her down in a dirt corner of a Tenderloin alleyway.

The day was soon turning into darkness and as she glanced up at the sky a large bird flew overhead throwing her in shadow, a crow. A chill wracked her body, she folded her arms in front of her chest and sped up.

She headed to the Westin St. Francis, though she wasn't dressed for the occasion. Her wardrobe consisted of thrift store clothes, things that would get filthy and ripped and she wouldn't mind at all. Her wardrobe said 'look the other way', it said 'street punk' and 'junkie'.

Michael Mina was crawling with sophisticates who turned their nose up at the sight of Alex, ripped jeans and faded Guns 'n Roses t-shirt, two sizes too big. The concierge approached but was intercepted by a handsome middle age man in a three piece suit.

Pope. He had no other name for as a long as she had known him and she had known him for as long as she could rightly remember. His hair was naturally white though he was not old, his eyes dark and sparkling, he had never changed for as long as she had known him.

"Ah, Alex, darling come and sit. I've ordered some red wine, would you like something to drink? You're looking awfully pale, my love. Have you been taking your medication?"

The sight of him made her stomach twist in disgust, for everything he was and everything he had given was tainted with the peculiar shade of evil.

He guided her with fingertips on her elbow, leading her to an intimate little table at the back of the restaurant. Tonight it was just her and Pope. He looked serene, perfectly manicured hands placed palm down on the table spread, his dark eyes twinkling, his lips curved in a dangerous sort of smile.

Pope was the devil, spinning cunning lies from truths for his own ends which were a mystery to all. The extent of his influence in the Day and Night was unknown to her although Alex knew his hand reached far and he always knew where she was and what she was doing.

Like a dutiful foster father he had not wanted Alex to be tainted by the Night nor the demonic, although Pope was a demon, of that she had no doubt.

"Water?"

She shook her head, no.

"So, how have you been? I heard the weather in Tokyo was particularly nasty in the last few weeks. I suppose you're still suffering from jetlag. How was old Adachi-san?"

Her eyes widened a fraction. Ganshin Adachi was the fugitive Buddhist monk who she had met in Harajuku. She hadn't told anyone where she was going and he hadn't told anyone where he was. "How did you-?"

He chuckled. "Come now, Alex, I know everything."

She bit her lip. The futility of trying to hide her goings on from Pope hit her squarely in the jaw. He had eyes everywhere.

She began to look at the faces of the surrounding diners, anyone of them could be working for Pope, anyone of them could be inhuman, any weapons at their disposal trained on Alex for the killing strike.

He switched from English to fluent Latin. "If you insist on hunting your little demon you should really learn to be more discreet. Or you could have come to me, it would have saved you the cost of travelling all that way."

She stared down at her knuckles as a waiter swept by leaving a gorgeous plate of scallops with a coconut jus, Pope thanked him. He carefully unfolded and lay the napkin on his lap.

"Anyway Alexandra, I really do think it's time for you to give up this childish pursuit of demon hunting and come back to me. I have a wonderful room prepared for you and we could throw a party to welcome you back to the fold."

She slammed her knuckles on the table surface. "No." She replied in Latin.

The other patrons started to turn and look at them. Pope gave a winning smile flashing perfect pearly white teeth. He took hold of her hand. "Careful. We wouldn't want you to damage those delicate little hands." He squeezed her fingers until she could feel the bones grind.

"I will never go back." She murmured through gritted teeth.

He released his grip and concentrated on eating, she listened to the grotesque sound of his overloud chewing, imaging other things. Sharper teeth, slivers of flesh and blood. Ancient things crawling up through grave dirt. She could feel the phantom of iron collar around her throat and found it hard to swallow.

"I am sorry you feel like that." He said dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. "But I know you teens with your mood swings. You'll come round eventually. You always do."

She thought of the letter that had come that morning, the clipping that she had screwed up into a ball and buried in the trash. Was it Pope playing sick fucking games again? She could not foresee nor explain his motives.

"Do we have to keep doing this?" She sighed and then switched back to English. "You know where I am at any given time. You can have your spies report back to you instead. I hate these fucking places and I hate you."

He reached out across the table and grasped her wrist, striking like a serpent. His eyes flashed, lit by hell fire. "I thought I told you to be careful, Alexandra and watch your tongue."

She sat in silence, staring at the walls, the other diners, anywhere but at Pope's face and his eyes. Alex loathed everything he was. Hated the way he said her name, stretching it on his tongue as if he possessed it. As if he possessed her. And in many ways he did.

Though Pope could not distract or divide her on her hunt for her demon. Tracking the demon had pre-occupied her for half of her life, chasing information around the globe, putting herself in danger each step of the way.

"Fine. Look at me. I said look at me."

She grudgingly looked up at his face, concentrating on a section of his chin too afraid to fall into the vortex of his stare.

"I have something you may be interested in, my dear. There is a translation of a very old text. The original surfaced in Tell Ibrahim Awad about forty years ago. The text may help toward this little project of yours. It's being shipped through San Francisco next week, the owner wants it rebound and has contracted a friend at Day & Nite Trade Bindery to do it." He offered some directions in the Bay Area.

She rose out of her seat intent on walking out. Pope caught her arm and squeezed hard, she looked down at her skin turning white beneath his fingertips, obstructing the flow of her blood. "Memento Mori, Alexandra darling."

She left.

*

She slammed the hotel room door and the cheap little painting that had always hung on the wall fell to the ground, the glass frame split. "Shit." She screamed turning to kick the door. As soon as she let out the cry, her head began to swim.

Her flesh already felt as if it were crawling, tiny clawed creatures picking away at her one cell at a time. It always felt like this after seeing Pope.

She collapsed on the bed and found herself laying beside her pills. She popped the cap off of the bottle and dry swallowed another pill, turning her face into the skinny pillow to try and suffocate the ache in her skull.

*

She woke with a start, the sound of rustling coming from within the room, somewhere but she couldn't see, it was too dark, the muzzy feelings of a dreamless sleep clinging to the edges of her sight. A shadow stood over her, eyes glowing, the colour of orchids, heliotropes, mulberry and violets.

A cry was stuck in her throat, she fought with the quilt, her hair all knotted in her face. There was a great crack, the chorus of glass impacting the floor. The rattle of pills taunting her from the bathroom.

The shadow faded into nothing and all sounds of invasion suddenly ceased.

All the lights switched on, the electric buzz became too loud, almost momentous and then the flickering began, throwing everything in strobe and she was entranced by the sight. Then the sudden smell of smoke, the underlying smell of sulphur, it rose to greet her and then the howling of alarms.

Infused with panic she managed to grasp hold of her senses, still fully clothed from when she had come in, she grabbed her duffle bag and made a dash toward the nearest window. She tried wrenching the resistant mechanism that had long since rusted, breaking skin and snapping nails in her efforts.

Frustrated she kicked the window, scarring her boots, the single pain shattered onto the grill of the fire escape.

She threw herself through the jagged jaws of the escape route she had made, landing with a thump on the rickety stair case that lead down to the narrow alley behind the hotel. She had ripped her clothes, her skin, a deep gouge in her arm with blood gushing onto her clothes.

She had moments to inspect the incision in the meaty walls of her flesh when the breath of smoke and sulphur reached through the window and seemed to thrust down her throat and ram up her nostrils. Her eyes began to water.

She made it to the bottom, the trembling of the staircase making her thighs feel weak. Clinging to the rail, feeling the heat radiate through the metal, she looked down to the bottom of the alley. The grimy floor, littered with decades of crud.

There was nothing there but concrete. She began to choke, black smoke leaking from the cracks in the window sills. She dropped her bag.

"Hey." Someone had seen her. Shouting ensued. "That fucking things on fire." A fire truck siren echoed from a great distance. "Jump down, girl, we'll catch you." She jumped, landing on top of a heavy set man who had probably drawn close to steal her bag when he saw her stumbling down the stairs.

The wind was knocked out of her. The man's callused clumsy hands blatantly groped her as he helped her to stand and she pushed at him smearing blood all over his clothes, his skin. His blue eyes were cruel as she glimpsed them.

The flames had steadily eaten through the building, small explosions were sounding every odd second until the final great burst of flame shot through the windows and glass fell like rain drops on the spectators.

More shouts and swearing as some people got glass in their eyes, their throats, some larger shards shredding skin. She had to leave, get away from the scene before the ambulances came and questions would be asked.

"Hey you, where are you going? You're hurt, girly." He said fingertips barely brushing her elbow when she spun round and gave such a look that made him pull back, mouth going slack with confusion and surrender.

Despite the gaping wound in her arm, the paramedics drawing closer and closer, she clapped a hand over the laceration and continued to limp away from the site. She dragged her bag behind her and headed to the only place she could think of.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter Three:

"Back already? I thought you had plenty to keep you going." Faye-Kam Lao chided through a slim crack in the door, her caramel eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. Kam was the youngest daughter of the children of Madam Lao, a talented herb woman who ran a modest Chinese medicinal store in the front but at the back the Lao's dealt in black market drugs and curative spells.

The Lao's supplied Alex with all of her medication, because she like other people in the city could not go to a regular pharmacist.

Alex leant heavily against the brick wall her arm had gone numb and the wound continued to bleed. Her face had gone pale and she could not muster the energy to respond. "What's that?" Kam sniffed the air, could pick up the scent of Alex's blood and smoke. "Jesus, you stink."

Kam seemed to debate with herself for several moments before she swung open the door and pulled Alex inside. "What the hell have you been doing?"

She was firmly shoved onto the stool. Though she swayed as she sat, barely able to keep upright. She still had hold of her bag but it was now brown and crusted with her dried blood, a dead weight on her good arm.

The spicy scent of the exotic stuffs sold in the front of the store wafted into the kitchen. Madam Lao's Special Herb store was a secret little store tucked so far away from the main streets that it was rarely visited by strangers.

Madam Lao appeared in the doorway. There was a beaded curtain but it had not stirred from her entrance. She spoke in rapid Cantonese to which Kam responded by turning her back on Alex and marching through to the store and out of Alex's sight. Alex was fluent in several languages but Cantonese was not one of them so she had no clue as to the women's exchange.

Madam Lao was a shrunken old woman whose skin hung in delicate creases and folds that any beauty she may have had in her youth was completely invisible. Her eyes had turned the blue of lapis, her lips pursed. She inspected Alex.

"Take off your shirt." Madam Loa instructed in her heavily accented English.

Alex let the bag drop to the ground and the contents spilled out, dirty shirts, jeans, underwear and empty bottles of pills all smeared with blood. She struggled to raise her arm, more blood flowing and seeping.

When her struggle was evident, Madam Lao helped her out of her shirt until she was propped half naked on the stool. The old woman inhaled sharply at the sight of her meaty wound, she shook her head and muttered something in Cantonese before saying. "You need hospital."

Alex shook her head, no. She couldn't go to hospital to face all the questions, she simply didn't exist in this society.

Madam Lao moved with precision that defied her age. Alex leant her head in her hand, elbow resting on the table. Her eyelids drooped, her mind wandered as Madam Lao pulled the needle and thread through her skin to seal with wound. As her eyes closed she caught a flash of glowing eyes the colour of orchids…heliotropes…mulberry…violets…

Before she realised she had fallen asleep and soft whispers slithered into the fabric of her dreams. Insidious words were spoken, a myriad of languages both modern and ancient, the stench of smoke that clung to her greasy hair, the stench of sulphur that rose stronger than the smoke.

Landscapes began to unfold before her eyes, great, wild forests of a forgotten time, a majestic mountain that loomed over her, intimidating, it's hot breath emitting the stench of sulphur and another smell, another taste…blood.

Whispers sighed through her skull.

"Wake up." Kam stood over her.

Alex eyes opened, still drowsy, nauseas from lack of blood. She looked down at her arm to find it wrapped in tight bandages, the scent of herbs wafting from it, dark blood seeped through the gauze. She had a man's dress shirt on.

"Get the fuck up." Kam kicked the leg of the stool and Alex almost lost her balance. She gingerly got to her feet, testing her weight on one foot and then the other.

"What happened?" She rasped as memories of the hotel fire came to her slowly.

"You tell me." Kam lit a cigarette blowing rings of smoke to frame Alex's face.

"I was bleeding."

"No shit." The bloody cotton and cloth were piled on the table, two bowls of blood were rippling softly beside it. Faye-Kam patted some ash into one bowl. There were many things a witch could do with two bowls of mortal blood, Alex thought. It was risky coming here.

"There was a fire."

Kam looked thoroughly bored but there was old rage shimmering behind her caramel eyes.

"There were eyes."

"Eyes?"

"How long have I been sleeping?"

"A few hours." The girl folded her arms in front of her chest, cig pinched in the corner of her mouth. "Ma wants you the fuck out of here."

"I have nowhere else to go."

"That's a shame. You're bad for business." Kam jerked her thumb toward the door. "Get out."

Alex had no desire to argue. She gathered her bag, moving slow as her arm felt bruised and stiff but usable. First she took each bowl of blood and poured it down the nearby sink.

"What are you doing?" Kam approached her quickly, grasping her bad arm and squeezing it.

"It's my blood." Alex whispered and despite the pain continued to pour until the last of it slid down the hole. She turned the tap on to clear the last drops of it from the basin before sluggishly picking up her belongings and leaving the store.

Faye-Kam Lao had hated Alex from the first moment they had met and she had good reason to. This was one of the many reasons Alex would not leave any trace of her behind at Kam's mercy. Alex had after all killed her twin brother.

*

Alex walked for a time but she was too dizzy from loss of blood. She huddled in the borrowed shirt, naked beneath it and still streaked with blood and the sticky residue of Madam Lao's herby concoction.

She cradled her bag in one arm. The other was stiff and almost useless and would be whilst she healed. Though she paid little attention to the pain, her mind was fully revived from the nap she had taken, her thoughts were racing.

Someone wanted her to remember her father's death. The night of smoke and blood. The newspaper clipping, the break in to the hotel room and the subsequent fire. Those eyes, they were the eyes of a blood drinker, she knew this to her marrow. But why?

Wild conspiracies ran through her mind but maybe it was a coincidence, a simple robbery raid in the building that had gone wrong. Her wound seemed to protest at the thought and she knew she had to stop walking now.

She found an alley frequented by homeless and drunks, cardboard shelters and flaming barrels. Few raised an eye as she entered, later they might inspect her as she slept either to rape or take anything which they saw of use or worth.

She found a vacant corner, hiding behind empty barrels and piles of sodden cardboard, concealing herself behind the trash. She had to think and she had to rest. Madam Lao had packed some gauze and the healing paste so she could redress the wound later. At some point she would need a new hotel and some cash, she only had a little buried in her bag.

She could call Cal, she had his cell number and some coins for the payphone but she didn't want to give him the impression she cared. He was too valuable to spend on friendship and she didn't want to draw Pope's full attention to him.

Pope. The thought of him made her bones cold. Maybe he had set fire to her hotel in the hopes she would return to him and back to his palatial estate in Surrey. No, Pope was not so brazen as to set fire to her place and with Alex inside.

If he had wanted her dead she would be dead. There was simply no room for mistakes where he was concerned. The thought of it all made her skin and head ache.

Even as she was hunkering down seeking more warmth, great shadows feel across her face and the sound of people scrambling away caught her attention.

She looked out, the barrel of fire sending light flickering unevenly across the long alleyway. A large crow was perched on the fence, wings spread like an eagle totem. This is what they must have been trying to escape. Alex stared at the bird and it caught her eye with its head cocked quizzically.

The sudden burst of voices crowded her mind and with trembling hands she reached into the secret incision in her bag where she had buried a bottle of Ziprasidone for emergencies. The rattle of the pills seemed to repel the bird and with a loud shriek it took flight and faded into the distant dark.

She swallowed two pills dry and lay her head down on her bag. It was dangerous to sleep. It was dangerous to be out in the open. It was all far too dangerous. With those thoughts she fell into an uncomfortable sleep.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter Four:

The vampires had interconnected offices in Mission Street. No one knew exactly what their business was but Alex assumed it was in every facet of society whether it was high flying business ventures, real estate, exports, drugs or prostitution.

It always struck her when she walked into the foyer of Von Seggern Malavazos Enterprise, there was no trace of wood in the building. Surfaces were either marble or granite, floors linoleum or expensive carpet, and walls made of glass or Perspex. For safety of course.

The corporate side of the Enterprise was run by two vampires: the Lamia and Night Lord Meadow Von Seggern and three thousand year old made vampire Tasi Malavazos. Their partnership was barely into its first century but the venture had proved lucrative for the vampires in the state.

She passed through the front doors without any obstruction and was standing in the glass elevator watching the sprawl of vampires below.

News of the shit pit hotel fire would have spread fast. The vampires must have been warned she would arrive because their eyes never once turned her way and Alex stood out like s sore thumb.

The majority of vampires were undeniably beautiful, it was part of the predators' lure but Alex never cleaved to vampire kind. There were some people who get lost in the obsession of the beauty, power and immortality a vampire could bequeath.

Alex could not abide their brand of magic: it was more acidic than the magicians. It was more dangerous because it could be addictive, the touch, the taste, the feel of them. There was nothing as intense as having a young face peer at you with ancient eyes.

She got off on the ninth floor.

The reception desk was manned by a young woman, fresh blood because Alex had not seen her three months on a previous visit. The woman looked up at her at the very last minute and Alex felt her throat fill with bile.

"I want to see Tasi." She said imperiously.

The girls cold gemstone eyes slid up and down her body, her stare felt like nails raking the surface of her skin and Alex was very aware of her mortality. She was also incredibly aware of the sight of herself, standing in the borrowed man's dress shirt stained with alley crud and old blood, her jeans ripped, her lacerated boots and her crummy duffel bag.

"Ms. Malavazos is not available at present may I take your name and I'll consult with-"

Alex's jaw set stubbornly she strode past the receptionist and reached for the door handle to Tasi's office. The vampire girl was there in an instant, her icy hand wrapped around Alex's wrist with a grip hard enough to snap her bones. "I said-"

The whispers rose in her mind as heat rose between them and she could see the quirk in the vampire's expression which signified she was in some kind of pain.

"That's enough, Mallory. Thank you." Tasi Malavazos' cool voice cut through the moment, the doors opened of their own accord and Tasi was seated behind her desk, staring at the tableau.

Moments of silence ticked by before Mallory grudgingly released Alex's wrist and returned to her

seat. Alex watched the girl elegantly ripple away before she stepped inside the office, closing the door firmly behind her.

"Take a seat." Tasi said casually. Tasi Malavazos appeared young, having been only sixteen when she had been Turned but her eyes radiated real resilience and Power. She was hand selected by the Council of the Night to sit at co-head of this corporation, a glimpse of her eyes would make any doubter understand why.

Alex perched on the edge of the leather chair laying her bag beneath her feet. Her dull mortal senses were as alert as they could be but her feelings were overpowering her reason and she steadily grew more angry and with this anger came the rise of whispers.

"You smell like a fresh wound, princess." Tasi smile was wide and then her nostrils flared as she delicately sniffed the air. "You also plain stink."

Alex glared at the table surface, careful not to look the vampire straight in the eye, for fear of her tricks and treats. Tasi's telepathic tendrils were already gently touching the edges of her psyche, trying to extrapolate past events from her mind, massaging her feelings of panic to subside and loosen her tongue to speak.

"Can I offer you a drink or a shower perhaps?"

The voices of her mind were vicious and sharp and cut the vampire's mental imprint from her mind. Tasi sat back sharply but did not question her. Mysteries surrounded Alex Burrows and sometimes it was dangerous merely to question.

"My hotel was torched yesterday." Alex said.

"It wasn't one of our People, I assure you, princess." Tasi said her eyes lit up from within. She didn't like the hint of accusation, the implications of her not being in control of her own district.

"I want to be clear, Tasi. I pay you generously for protection from shit like this." She showed her bandaged arm, the bloodstain was black on the new gauze and Tasi was instantly riveted by the sight.

"And how do you know it was a vampire?" Tasi challenged.

"The eyes." Alex said softly. Her mind purring with memories of those eyes: shimmering, penetrating her skull and her soul. The colour of crushed violets or purple cyclosilicate mineral. "The eyes were fucking glowing."

"I can guarantee no vampire in my district has been trespassing or operating in your abode." She held up a hand to pause the conversation and buzzed reception. "Mallory, dear, please bring Ms. Burrows some tea. So how can I help you, princess?"

"If anything were to happen to me, you, Mallory, this whole place would disappear overnight."

"Is that a threat?"

"Just reminding you, Tasi."

Tasi's expression became cruel as her forehead furrowed and nose wrinkled revealing sharp teeth. "Then let me also remind you, princess, that there will come a time when you will be isolated from your great benefactor and there will be nothing standing between me and your throat."

"Is that a threat?"

"A reminder." Tasi laughed. "I like you, princess and I can see that you're scared. You said a vampire attacked you? Then a vampire I will find for you. Have you any description?"

"Purple eyes."

"Purple?" Her eyes rolled in thought. "Purple eyes are unusual I must admit. A Lamia perhaps?"

Alex shook her head, no. "A vampire."

"You're most adamant on that score, princess."

"Here." She threw an envelope across the table.

Tasi picked up the envelope, eyebrow arching at the dried blood stains. She opened it delicately and shuffled the notes inside. "This is Sterling."

"It's all I have." Alex said softly.

"If that's all then, princess please can you leave, that smell (nodding at her arm) is driving my People to distraction." She smiled grotesquely wide though threat and fury shimmered beneath the surface. Alex could feel the place grow warm and Tasi's Power vibrating against her skin in response to the sudden rise in temperature.

Alex left the office as Mallory approached with a tray with a hot cup of tea and a bowl of sugar lumps.

*

Alex was leaning on a chicken wire fence watching the sun slowly disappear into the line of the horizon, the last spill of the sun, like liquid gold on the land before it surrendered to the night. A sudden icy breeze lifted her hair and she raised her face to the sky to greet it.

Day & Nite binders. It was one of the two times she could get to the book before it was scheduled to be moved out of the state. All she had to do was pick the lock and take the book, it was simple.

When the last spool of day light melted away to moonshine she scuttled under a break in the fence. It had not been put up for security but rather to define a boundary, she stuck to the outer edges of the lot, out of the reach of the CCTV again not positioned for true security.

She noted the unmarked black van too late. They were commonly used by the Tribunal.

The Tribunal was a human faction, used to cull the numbers of supernatural beings in the country. They organised military cells called chapters all over North America and had even spread someway into Europe.

They were members of the elite, ex-soldier, ex-police, ex-CIA and others. They were highly trained specialists in vampire hunting, pelt hunting and witch finding. She had heard the Tribunal itself was an old institution harking back to the rule of King James I of England, and his book, their handbook _Daemonologie_.

The Tribunal cruelly eliminated the People.

But of course, as with everything, there was a delicate balance between this faction and their supposed enemies. Principle was not above greed. The Tribunal worked in conjunction with the Night World Council, they helped the Night eliminate its troublesome elements, the wild and its worst: those who wished to reveal themselves to the world and live in harmony.

The Tribunal had become organised when there were too many rogue vampire killers and pelt hunters, it married the vigilante factions across North American and gave them rules and purpose.

Alex had run into them a few times before.

They found her presence meddlesome and a complete mystery. She knew they couldn't kill her because of the consequences they would have to endure. Pope held sway even with the Tribunal.

She watched as a figure emerged from the van, his frame and carriage were familiar to her. She had run into Natanael Cuervo before. He had never liked her.

The Tribunal had once tried to recruit her, it had been three years ago when they had run into her for the third or fourth time. They had taken notice when they realised how resourceful she was, how she managed to gain superior intelligence without apparent connections. When she had refused they appealed to their judges to sanction her execution as a Person or People sympathiser.

They had held her for three months, locked in a white room, feeding her basic proteins and water. She had been incessantly questioned but nothing had come of it. The request for her execution was denied and she was released back into civilization, she had left he country soon after that.

Cuervo already had his gun out.

"Alex." He spoke her name with familiarity as if they were friends. "Come on out, girl, I knew we'd run into you eventually. What has it been? A year?"

He smiled, it lit his young face making him momentarily handsome and she knew then she was in trouble. She tried to dodge him, to run she had already made a path away from the bindery but he caught her in his powerful arms and dragged her further into the shadows, out of the sight of his team and the cameras.

He pushed her against a brick wall, she caught the whiff of bitter alcohol on his breath and cringed. She cried out, startled as he squeezed her bad arm concealed beneath a jacket.

She saw his eyes, combing over her body, noticing the swell of her breasts, her hips, her thighs. Her mind was a cacophony of indignant whispers.

"You shouldn't have come back here." He growled in her ear.

She was frustrated. She couldn't open her mouth to speak, the voices were clouding her senses, she couldn't see, she couldn't hear anything but the sound ricocheting around her skull.

"You're just asking for trouble." Cuervo thrust the barrel of his gun between her teeth, he slid the oily metal back and forth on her tongue as if it were something else.

He wanted to humiliate her and she was scared. One slip and her head could be taken off. Useless tears leaked from her eyes, salty in her mouth different from the bitter taste of his gun. "It would be so satisfying to end your life, you miserable maggot." He whispered.

He took the gun out of her mouth, pressing the hot metal against her cheek, wet with her saliva. "Let me go." She whispered.

"Or you'll what?"

"Or I'll shoot." The barrel of Cal's shotgun lurched out of the dark and pressed to the back of Cuervo's neck.

Alex's eyes widened a fraction, simultaneously glad and horrified by Cal's sudden appearance. Cuervo's dark eyes flicked to her and his lips vibrated over his teeth before he holstered his gun and stepped away. Alex fell forward, breathing hard, doubling over to spit out the nasty taste that scarred the inside of her mouth.

Cuervo turned to look at Cal who had wound a black scarf around his face but his blond hair was messy about his head, hazel eyes intense.

"This isn't over." Cuervo said and walked away casually. She knew he had taken a mental note of Cal and would try to have him found and followed. Lucky Cal was a myth.

Cal unwound the scarf revealing a big shit eating grin. "I guess you owe me."

"Fuck you." She said her voice raspy.

"You shouldn't be out here alone. What did you think you were doing?"

The taste of gun grease mingled with the salt of her tears was still in her mouth. Her skin burnt with shame and fury. "There are worse things than the Night World." She whispered.

He stared at her uncomprehending.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter Five:

Starvin' Marvin was the kitschy diner by the old hotel, selling soggy fries and waffles, that night it stood almost empty. A few drunks and drifters lounged in the greasy vinyl booths. Alex was slumped in a booth waiting for the public phone to ring, willing it to scream as she gnawed on her bottom lip.

She didn't have to wait long. She picked up the receiver on the eight ring, teeth gritted and waiting for him to speak. "Alexandra?" Pope's voice was carefully controlled. She knew he must be furious with her, he often was.

She mumbled something in response.

"Darling, I'm relieved to hear your voice. I heard about the fire."

"Thanks for your concern." She said with a bitter note of sarcasm.

"Did you get what you wanted?"

Not even close, she thought tongue twisting inside her mouth to exorcise the feeling of Cuervo's gun barrel.

"Come back to me." He sprang the ceaseless question and her answer was always the same.

"No." She spat the word with a weight of silent curses beneath it.

"You'll die." He spoke as if it were a fact and not a threat.

"Not until I get what I want."

"Keep in touch."

The line went dead. Her hand was shaking as she placed the phone back into the cradle. She took a few minutes to collect herself before she slunk out of the booth and slipped into a stool beside Cal.

He was slouched in his own seat, in a faded Grateful Dead t-shirt, his fingers twitching as he wanked his air guitar along to a Led Zeppelin tune crackling through the PA system.

Her patience was wearing like the enamel on her teeth as she ground them. "I'll ask you kindly one more time. Stop."

He relaxed into the his seat, looking sheepishly around him, placating curious patrons with a disarming grin, that unspoken southern charm. The waitress came and filled their cups without having being asked. She left with a significant stare at the witch.

Alex hadn't slept since her night in the alleyway and exhaustion pressed on her eyelids. She had taken Cal to the diner far away from the bindery and Cuervo and his men.

She swallowed big mouthfuls of black coffee trying to rid her mouth of the awful lingering taste of gun grease and Cuervo's alcohol breath.

"What are we doing here, I thought you hated the bay?" Cal asked conversationally as he tipped several generous spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and stirred obnoxiously, hitting the inside of the cup as if it were a steel pan. "Something about the junkies and fish scales..."

"You're my alibi for the Tribunal."

He leaned in close, taking the time to search her face, for puckered bruises or cuts, something that would betray a scuffle. She looked composed, clean, her sore and cracked knuckles hidden beneath knitted fingerless gloves. "You've...bitten your lip."

She touched her mouth feeling the smooth, shiny surface of her lip.

"You know it'd be more convincing if we were, say at your place," his fingers travelled across the table, his fingertips grazing her exposed fingertips. "We could slip into something more comfortable."

She gripped his hand, the sudden movement made him cry out, drawing more attention. The waitress was speaking in low tones to her colleague one free hand reaching for a cordless telephone. Alex relinquished her grip, his hand fell to the table a limp thing making their cups jump.

She could imagine what he had been doing out there, perhaps following her, more likely brokering some kind of drug deal before he had one of those strange feelings.

She stood, hoisting her duffel bag onto her back she approached the women behind the counter, her name tag read Penelope. Alex forced a smile. "Men, they don't know how to keep their hands to themselves." She lay some mixed notes on the counter. "He'll need some dinner, make sure it's something...low in sugar."

Neither woman knew what to say. Alex didn't even know if they could understand her accent. Allowing herself the pleasure of a small and little exercised smile she left the diner stepping into the tainted mist of the magic kissed bay.

She had the overwhelming urge to flee, to get out of San Francisco, to get out of the United States. But she needed her book; it was the purpose of her being there. In that instant she wanted to sleep. She'd have to find a motel instead of the street. She ignored passersby, hunkering down into her coat, staring at the pavement.

She glanced up for just a moment and even from a great distance she found herself compelled to stare. She couldn't help herself and didn't care, she was stunned. He was mesmerising for a Person. The memory of purple eyes flashed in front of her and she felt disoriented. She stopped and placed a hand to her head as if to stop her mind spinning out of control.

The voices rose nonetheless. They babbled but she couldn't divine what they were trying to say. She blindly reached for her pills to swallow two tablets dry.

Her nerves shredded, her mouth was filled with the phantom of Cuervo's gun. Her wounded arm throbbed with awareness. She was tucked into a darkened doorway waiting for the last grasp of the fit to leave her and the voices eventually slipped into silence.

Her vision cleared and she began to walk again, tripping over her own feet. Her eyes searched for the Person in the distance, she just wanted to look at him, to admire his uncanny beauty but the memory of his face became distorted as the seconds ticked by until she wasn't sure what she was searching for at all.

*

The motel was grim. It was cheap. Large insects crawled in the corners and on the walls, there was crud on the wall paper and dust on all surfaces. The bed linen had never been changed, a circular clock ticked obstinately nearby and there was a stained towel on the cracked and broken radiator. She could smell sex in the room.

She closed the now yellow blinds down to buffer some of the sounds of the outside. Just one night of sleep. Please. She prayed. Just one night.

She lay on top of the bed, fully clothed and using her duffel bag as a pillow. Her eyes closed and her mind drifted to a time, years ago, things she had tried to forget. The shadows of shadows creeping through her nightmares blacker than the demons that walked the earth. Cold, hungry and crucially alone she could remember with perfect clarity the violation, humiliation and helplessness of her childhood.

Pope's ornate cage, the place he called home, the prison she had lived in. She remembered the vague parade of the others that had been there, girls, boys, men and women. He had had many children crawling at his feet, most with leashes about their throat, gilded collars encrusted with priceless jewels. Other creatures crawled there too, creatures that never looked quite human.

_You're a special one, Alex._ Pope would say in a fatherly voice that made her sick to her stomach.

When she had first run away she had nowhere to go. She had to make money somehow, money to pay for cheap hotels and food, it was anything except intercourse.

She twisted and turned, growing hot and uncomfortable. Flashes of purple eyes interrupted her thoughts, the ghost of Cal fingertips touching her hand, Cuervo's gun made her gag. She woke up in a cold sweat.

She looked at the bedside clock to find she had only been asleep for twenty minutes.

*

Alex took time to finger the puckered flesh around her wound. It was no longer raw thanks to Madam Loa's concoction. The two day old wound looked three weeks healed.

It was twilight and she had an appointment with her contact Bernie Leroux at Kitt's Night Club on Mason Street. He faithfully supplied her with street level information that came his way for a fee, and it wasn't very much.

She got there a little after nine o'clock. All sorts of People frequented Kitt's, it was not reserved for one species though it was certainly a Night World bar. Humans could enter but it was hard to find.

She had been sitting at the bar for half an hour, nursing a ice cold glass of water much to the barman's chagrin.

Bernie Leroux was in his mid forties, he was a hairy son of a bitch, both gruff and crude. He liked to ride motorcycles and was a mechanic by trade. He slid into the seat beside her, nodding discreetly.

Her ordered a beer whilst he mumbled about the fire at her motel, he told her about trouble brewing amongst the vampires in the city. There had been a split between Von Seggern and Malavazos dividing the bitten and born vampires. A notorious witch, Belinda Short had moved into the state, buying property in the south of the slot, there were more rumours of skin dealing.

"Nothing more. Things are just moving on, y'know? Just moving on."

She discreetly slid some notes across the table and he palmed it only offering a faint nod before he left leaving his beer half full on the bar.

She stayed a few moments more, finishing her water before laying the glass down and rising to her feet to leave.

As she shrugged on her jacket she was gently nudged and spun round to find a Person staring down at her. Her mind swam with a vision of purple eyes but she found a dark eyed fiend instead. A greedy beast stalked behind his eyes that had become all pupil and the tips of milky fangs dented his juicy lower lip.

Even she could see he was young for a vampire, unable to disguise his eagerness, his blatant lust for warm living blood. Small beads of sweat burst on his dark chocolate skin, belying his nerves and his lust.

"Sorry," she mumbled and tried to push past. Panic rose inside her chest and it suddenly became hot.

He grasped her elbow, his fingers cold and grip like a vice. "You're not going anywhere just yet, doll. What's your name?"

"Let go." She said through clenched teeth trying to gently tug her arm out of his grasp.

With his superior strength he pulled her through the thickening crowd, smashing against the bodies of the gathered clubbers until she was eventually released into a dark, intimate corner. She felt as if she were suffocating and then her arm made contact with the wall and a sharp stinging pain provoked a slither of whispers in her mind.

He was like a great amorphous being woven from the dark, all she could smell was traces of peppermint and old blood. She could feel the mental intrusion of his willpower like a slick chill touch on her brain.

"Who are you here with?" He forced her head from side to side as he searched her throat skin for scars, for marks of belonging.

It was becoming incredibly hot as her heart thumped rapidly. If he just turned his attention away for a second she could reach for the stiletto in her hair...

"She's with me." The spell broke, the shadow was just a boy and Cal Radford stood tall and his expression was severe, broiling with hot, wicked energy. "And I don't like to share."

"I can take care of myself," she said softly though she slipped into place beside him, in the shadow of his protection. She didn't like the words he had chosen, as if he owned her.

"No offence, I was only looking for a snack." The vampire held up his empty hands, exposing bright white teeth in an awful smile. He left with a cruel, lingering look at Alex.

"You didn't have to do that." She said to Cal who was following her out, hands jammed in his pockets, eyes turned to the floor. "Like I said, I can take care of myself."

He snorted. They both knew that she was far too fragile to survive a fight with an overzealous young vampire. He caught up with her, striding side by side, their hands almost brushing. He was angry with her. She knew it. She could feel it.

"Looks like they're initiating any young punk into the vamp club these days. Did you get what you came for?" He still hadn't looked at her.

She nodded.

"You hungry? I know a nice little-"

"I'm going to get an early night." She interrupted.

"Oh." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking this way and that to conceal his disappointment.

Her throat closed and she had to take a moment before she could find her voice. "Meet me at the bindery tomorrow."

He looked up, hopeful.

She raised a hand in a brief wave before dashing across the road toward her hotel.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter Six:

In the cool insides of the bindery Alex was trying hard not to notice Cal staring at her.

"What are we looking for again?" He asked to break the silence that had been wedged between since they had met up earlier that night.

"Just a book." She replied lightly.

He shrugged turning his eyes toward the counters filled with stationary, paper, heavy duty equipment sitting in shadows and slivers of leather and card covered in fine layers of paper dust. There were many books in the bindery.

"Are you going to tell me what happened the other night?" He asked casually with his back turned to her.

She cast her eyes to the ground, her jaw grew tight as the memories of Cuervo and his gun sullied her thoughts. "He's an old acquaintance." She said through her teeth.

Cal nodded, "oh."

She grew stiff, the silence intensifying as they progressed through the interior leaving swathes through the dust. Her cheeks burnt with self conscious shame, she didn't want him to think she owed him, she owed her allegiance to no one.

"Were you following me?" She asked.

"I wasn't." He replied a little too quickly. He had a meeting with one of his dealers, spreading more Mysteries on the street, he mumbled absently as he rifled through a stack of freshly bound encyclopaedias.

Alex had drifted to the end of the hall, to the large double doors that had to be wrenched open.

"Ah, Alexandra welcome."

Tasi Malavazos held out her arms as a large grin split her youthful face.

Alex stood stock still and terrified.

"Oh and how delightful you've brought a friend I see."

Cal pulled his scarf about his face to disguise himself. He stood behind her, she could feel his warmth thrumming at her back.

"I'm not here to interfere with your business, Tasi." Alex said softly. "I just came here to collect a book."

"This isn't a library, darling." Tasi smiled and four vampires materialised at her back, bleeding from the shadows of the room like phantoms. Alex half-recognised some of them, some of them recognised her. Their eyes and fangs cut through the darkness like a promise of violence.

"You wouldn't be interested in this book." Alex continued to say, voice breathy with mounting panic.

The vampire woman laughed, her lips a slash of bright crimson. "Of course you are welcome to any bits of tat we don't require, as far as our agreement goes."

"Yeah." She reached backward and squeezed Cal's wrist asking him silently to fall back, to stay out of this.

"Did I mention you're looking ripe these days, Alexandra?" Tasi's eyes began to glow brightest of all.

"Just let me pass." She asked through her teeth.

With a gesture of Tasi's perfectly manicured fingertips the vampires fell back allowing Alex to walk slowly over the threshold, around Tasi and toward another door leading to a small office, an office that would hold what she was looking for, according to Pope's description.

Even as she walked, each breath careful and controlled as if one sudden movement would rouse the vampires to attack. Something did change. There was a sudden and unwelcome cold breeze.

The vampires posture changed, their head whipped up like cobras and she knew something was wrong.

There was the whisper of footsteps. Her mind was already racing to the same conclusion as Tasi.

"The Tribunal," Tasi hissed who must have picked up a scent of guns or heard the steady hum of their inner ear communication devices. "You have something to do with this?"

Alex shook her head, no. The Tribunal had not business with her save for the few personal debts. Her thoughts jumped to Arturo in the bar, the rumour of the vampire split pitting Malavazos against her long-term ally Von Seggern.

"Then you best run and hide, princess because here's where our fun begins."

Tasi looked wild, reckless and beautiful. She was illuminated by anticipation of the hunt and this was where her magic, the magic of vampirism, really shone.

Alex managed to squeeze into an alcove before the fighting erupted, the vampires moved first, ambushing their ambushers only a few moments before the guns started firing and sulphur and blood filled the air of the bindery.

Cal had dived into an alcove nearby, he was not lit by a bloodthirsty light but his chest puffed with great breaths and his eyes seemed to take on a certain glow. They spotted one another across the room.

She saw a vampire's hand come clean off. It would heal in weeks maybe months but the Tribunal meant murder and nothing more.

Cal reached for his gun, the glamour that had concealed it suddenly melted and it was clutched in both hands. He waited for an opportunity to scramble across the floor to crouch beside her and use his body to shield her from the sight of violence.

"Might as well join the fun." He glanced behind his shoulder with a lop sided smile.

"Probably what the Tribunal thought." She said a bullet narrowly missing her head and leaving half the wall in splinters.

"We need to get you out of here." Cal said firing shots blindly into the distance not caring if he hit human or vampire. She saw a Tribunal-man go down in a spray of red.

"I need that book." She hissed stubbornly. It was the last opportunity she could get her hands on the text, another step in her hunt for the demon. She couldn't give up the opportunity to grab it.

"Alex, no."

She ran toward the final door, twisting the handle which became greasy with her panicked sweat.

"Shit." Cal fired random shots left and right to frighten the humans though some of the vampires were crawling toward them, their body covered in their own sticky bright blood and other things.

Alex managed to collapse across the threshold of the next room and lifted her face to find the book sitting on a pulpit, newly bound and gleaming as if lit by magic. She scrambled to her feet and reached for it, sliding it into her messenger bag and felt the magical cage fall into place around her. She hadn't expected it.

"Cal." She called.

She heard loud swearing before Cal burst into the room covered in red, colliding with a tendril of magic that made him howl and grasp his arm.

The shooting and cursing continued beyond the threshold whilst Cal fell to his knees trying to figure a way to undo the magic that bound Alex to the pulpit. She watched him enact a series of hand gestures, muttering words of languages she could not grasp.

The bright bursts of colour form behind the doors was getting less and less frequent. The shooting gallery dissolved into an eerie silence. "Cal, hurry." Alex whispered sharply.

She was frightened, the Tribunal could take her in and provide evidence of a pact with the vampires. She couldn't afford capture because she couldn't afford to die.

"I'm trying." He said through gritted teeth. Sweat beaded on his brow, locked in a terrible kind of concentration.

She heard the shuffling footsteps, it must have been the Tribunal's men because the vampires rarely made a clumsy sound like that. She wondered who their target was, was it Tasi and her vampire guards or did they have a vested interest in the book too?

"I thought you had immunity from the vampires." Cal muttered.

"I do. Obviously I don't have immunity in a fucking turf war."

"Mind your language, sugar."

"Are you in there, Burrows?" Her ears pricked up at the sound of Cuervo's voice.

Alex swore under her breath. The vampires must have disappeared, that's if they weren't all dead.

"I knew you had to be here for a reason."

"A friend of yours?" Cal asked having recognised Cuervo's voice.

"I always knew you were in with these bastards." Cuervo spat. "Come out, Burrows or we'll come in and get you."

Cal lifted the magic, breaking the invisible bonds that had taken up the air, his eyes fluttered and strength seemed to desert him, he sagged over as a sudden fragrant breeze wafted out of the nearby window.

Alex was in motion immediately, going to the narrow window as if following the puff of unwoven magic. The way was slim but enough for them to climb through one at a time. Below them was a platform of trash, bags, boxes and cans. "Do you trust me?" She asked Cal without sparing a glance for him.

Cal didn't have time to respond before she grasped his hand and pulled him toward the window. They jumped. The sound of a gun shot echoed in her ears. Deafening.

They landed with a thud, one after the other.

Alex took a moment to recover, testing each limb for injury, her arm ached but that was the old wound. She had survive and she allowed herself a small laugh of disbelief. She climbed to her feet only mildly disoriented, the momentary dizziness caused her to trop a few steps forward. When her senses cleared she looked up to find Cuervo aiming his gun between her eyes.

"I thought we made it clear," Cuervo spat his words until she was forced to wipe the pungent saliva from her face. "This is our turf, our hunting grounds, we don't need little girls playing with guns and knives fucking up our operations."

She was shivering with the anticipation of his fist, sharp and heavy against her face, like the moments before Prince Charming's kiss both agony and terrifying sweetness.

There was an explosion of red, the salty texture of life and she was infused with a white hot rage. As familiar as a favourite coat, she drew comfort from this anger and the fighting instinct possessed her. She had been trained to fight. He had just got the drop on her.

She grasped his arm and held him in a pacifying grip, using his own strength against him to put pressure on his wrist until she could with a little more force break it. "I was just leaving." She said through her teeth.

She released him with a little push and he muttered curses beneath his breath.

"You won't touch me again." She said.

He laughed nervously holding his palms skyward in mock surrender. "I'm just waiting for the day, maggot."

A sudden burst of static and a crackling sounded in his ear piece, he pressed a finger to cavern of his ear to sharpen the sound. Alex could hear the butchered dialogue, the target had made it out of the building and was making her way on foot eastward. So it was Tasi they were hunting after all.

Tasi would have to go underground, she supposed, especially if Von Seggern was targeting her through the Night and using the forces of the day to help.

Cuervo cast one last petulant glare her way before running out of the alley. When she was satisfied he wasn't coming back she turned around to look for Cal who was still lying on the gathered bags of trash.

"Are you okay?" She asked as she approached.

Cal was staring up at the starry sky, his voice hoarse and hurting as he spoke. "I hope it was worth it."

He fell unconscious.

*

Cal's eyes opened a slender crack.

"You're all right." Alex's voice held no expression.

A bullet had caught his shoulder, seared his flesh, she had taken the shrapnel from the wound but it had swollen nastily. It was healing now though, remarkably fast, she thought as she inspected it closely.

Cal reached out to cover her hand with his own, her hand pressing a cool compress gently to his forehead. "What happened?" He asked exercising his tongue that felt thick and salty.

"I got my book." She said.

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "It was worth it then?"

She stood up to take a seat near the murky window pane, the moonlight creating halos about her blond head. She looked as if she hadn't slept though he had no idea how long he had been unconscious, it felt like moments.

Hi gaze shifted to the bottle of pills on the window sill and then to the book in her lap.

"Let's have a look at this prize, then." He said whilst trying to sit up but his arm was stiff and painful, the sudden stinging sensation brought him plummeting back to the mattress, staring up at the ceiling puffing air through lips that had formed and 'o' of surprise.

Alex held up the book, her nostrils flared as she breathed in the scent of the new binding. She opened the pages and a new scent of pungent papyrus wafted through the room.

Alex skimmed the uneven surface beneath her fingertips. "This text was found in the fourteenth century, a whole order dedicated to committing arcane knowledge to the page was executed after transcribing the ancient tablets and composing this volume. It was supposed to have been destroyed."

Her mind was occupied with thoughts of the libraries of knowledge, aeons of histories that were never harnessed in the arranged pages of a book. How quickly Time was forgotten. How many had suffered to record it. She closed the book and held it to her chest as if she were protecting a child.

Her fingers flicked the edge of card that stuck out of the side like a book mark, the letter that had been slipped beneath her hotel door only days before. The paper had an address and she knew the handwriting.

Gideon Parasyn was a noted psychotherapist from Boston who specialised in mental trauma and his curlicue script was unmistakable. Alex had found his last client, debutant Hayley Springhallow, the Springhallows were the seventh of the Lamia Houses. Parasyn had come upon the Night through Hayley and he had spiralled into vice.

Gideon Parasn was the face her demon was wearing now.

She had come into Parasyns' life as a research assistant for a private investigator who worked for Annabelle Parasyn, a overly suspicious wife who was concerned about her husband who had slowly begun to disappear from their life.

The woman had suspected him of affairs with his patients but she had no idea of the true vein his affair would take him.

Alex had come close to Parasyn in Boston a few months ago but when he had heard the whisper of her name he had left the continent. She had followed him into Europe until she lost the trail and had a lead in Japan.

The trail went cold and returned to San Francisco because she had the summons from Pope. Pope had always been fond of the city, though he didn't live there. Pope knew the book was going through San Francisco and that was partly why she had been called also.

The note in the book was written by Parasyn's hand, it was unmistakable. It was a message, luring her to the demon. An invitation to meet.

This was why she'd asked Cal for the ingredients, the words to a forbidden spell. She was going to try and tear the demon from its shell. Weaken its fleshy hold on the world. She needed a spellcaster to help.

Cal's eyes were riveted on her face, the movement of her lips, the way she shifted uncomfortably in her seat as she noticed the intensity of his stare.

"You'll be fully healed soon." She said.

He rolled his eyes toward his arm, veiled in a thing sliver of gauze. "Yeah, looks like."

"You should leave as soon as you can."

His eyes snapped to hers and his jaw set. Anger bubbled inside him and he struggled to sit up, despite the pain, reaching for his shirt hanging nearby.

"Wait, you're not ready to leave yet." Alex stood, one hand reaching but not deigning to touch him.

"I know when I'm not wanted, darling."

She couldn't fathom a reply. She couldn't articulate why she had said it, she knew the less time he spent with her the least amount of trouble she could cause him. She used him for a reason she didn't want their relationship to go beyond the bounds of that reason.

They weren't friends although she struggled with soft feelings for him.

She didn't protest further as he stood and pulled on his stained t-shirt. She couldn't help but stare at his bare chest, the rippling chord of muscles, sculpted flesh. She couldn't help but notice the nail marks on his back when she had taken off his shirts.

She thought of the waitress who had eyed him up, she remembered the red hot vampire that had stood between them when they had first met and the slew of women in-between.

He didn't turn to face her when he spoke. "You're impossible."

She clung to the book as if it were a life line, as if it were the only thing holding her mass of quivering insides from spilling out of her lips.

He slammed the door hard on the way out, leaving flakes of plaster to fall on the floor like confetti at a wedding.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven:

Alex bustled out of the pet store drawing her hood up over her head, to shield herself against the light and from whomever would be watching.

The dynamic in the city had changed overnight and Alex had the distinct feeling she was trapped. The city was divided between the tribes, each corner was scoped, each move carefully monitored and controlled.

She couldn't just leave. Not without meeting Parasyn and the demon behind the flesh. She couldn't just leave because the People would not simply let her go.

She walked quickly, trying not to think too much, afraid to broadcast too much information and there were many things for her to consider that day. The cage in her hand was rattling, the creature inside throwing its weight around. She had bought a fox snake from the pet store.

Tonight was the night she would drive the demon's questing spirit into the snake flesh and free Parasyn's body from its possession.

She had been practising the spell for months: perfecting a mixture of voodoo and witch craft to make an effective exorcism. She was no priest nor practitioner, things could still go wrong, it was a gamble that could mean the end of her life, danger to her very soul, but what kind of life would she lead if she didn't take any risks?

She knew many things about her demon. Through textbooks mostly. There were portions of lore and events humans could never read on a page or pick up through oral folklore. Tales from hell itself.

She often wondered how the demon managed to claw from the bowels of hell to earth. Why had he done it? For what purpose? The simple pursuit of earthly power seemed almost inconsequential to being a demon heralded in the underworld as a king.

Why did her father have to die as a consequence of its ascendance to earth? She had many questions she would have liked to ask it but greater was the need to remove him from Parasyn's body and stop him from making solid plans in the mortal realm.

To have the demon in the flesh in this city was dangerous beyond imagining.

What also interested her was how it had got Parasyn as a host. Who had guided it, tempered it to be more subtle, to seep into mortal flesh? Demon possessions were rarely subtle, no they were messy and often brief. Once the host and demon were married in the flesh the demon would go forth and devour, defile, destroy and not stop for subtlety. The demon had to have had some kind of instruction.

It conjured thoughts of someone farming host bodies to demons looking for flesh. Skin markets. Black market. Night traffic. She patted her pocket nervously feeling the crisp edge of the note dig into her skin and thought of the thin paper clipping safely stored inside its creases.

Arturo had mentioned a name, Belinda Short. She was one of many that could be fearless enough to step forth into the world of demons. Cal knew People in the markets, he could give her names but she would not approach him now not with the last lingering look imprinted on the back of her eyelids.

She hadn't expected him to leave as he did, slamming the door between them. His feelings were deeper than she had imagined and she was sorry to think that her feelings were too.

Even as she thought it the whispers swamped her ears and the sounds of the city were distorted. She stumbled and the cage fell out of her hand and fell to the ground, rattling as it rolled a few feet away.

The fox snake hissed and slithered out of its prison, testing and tasting the air taking its time in choosing which way to escape. Alex stared at it, the whispers continued and it was as if the snake itself was speaking to her in a myriad of languages she could not decipher.

She struggled to stand, her limbs trembling from the shock of the voices, her hood pulled off her head, blond hair wild about her face.

She took a few moments before dusting herself off, trying in her practised way to ignore the whispers, to pretend they weren't slowly turning to screams that demanded her attention like a petulant chorus of children.

As she moved to grab the snake someone gracefully swooped it from the ground and it coiled around a pale hand. She lifted her eyes to find the ashen face of a vampire staring down at her with the intensity of one trying to hypnotise.

"Can I have my snake?" She stammered through the cacophony that filled her ears and slowly blurred her vision.

"Interesting choice of pet." He replied.

"Can I have my snake?" She repeated.

Her eyes were on his hand, on the beige and black pattern of the snake's scales, on the quick darting tongue anything but his eyes. The whispers in her mind were now lulling, warning, coaching her to be still, calm, silent.

He kicked the cage over to her and it rolled at her feet. She didn't move to pick it up, not wanting to move her eyes from some part of him. "You want it? Why not come and get it?"

Alex went cold all over. It hadn't occurred to her that she would die on the street like common prey. The protection she had paid for years had finally came to naught. Tasi was no longer in authority and so no one was rigorously policing the feeding habits of the People.

She had heard stories, read the papers, daily they explained mysterious attacks and freak accidents, many tried to lay blame on the weather, the ebb and tide of God's wrath. The streets were an open buffet to those with balls enough to take it.

Alex began to retreat, slow, measured steps back and the vampire merely watched with a cruel smile on his lips.

Fight or flight, she turned her back on him and ran. If she could get to a wide open space, into the thick of a crowd she would survive unscathed. Being a nobody the vampire would forget. She would get another snake. No hard feelings.

Even as she ran she felt her step fail, her ankle buckle she was on the ground again, her chin grinding against concrete. She fell at someone's feet and she looked up, feeling as if the moment was prolonged, stretched out in slow motion.

A long line of leg, the fringe of a coat and…Orchids, heliotropes, mulberry, violets…the thought came crashing in on her in an instant and she drenched in brilliant shades of purple.

The voices blossomed suddenly, shrieking indignantly in her ears but she had truly collapsed like an impotent marionette, broken down limbs, and bleeding on the streets. She closed her eye, her body couldn't cope with open eyes and the turmoil inside.

When she opened them there was no one on the street with her the voices ceased instantly.

The snake was back in its cage, the cage placed beside her. She touched the graze on her chin to make sure it was real, blood darkened her fingertips. She stood, testing her limbs that were useless to her only moments ago.

Looking fearfully around her she pulled up her hood, took up the cage in one trembling hand and ran towards her hotel to lock herself inside.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight:

Alex looked at the sky to try and determine the time. She had left a message for Cal to meet her tonight but he was nowhere to be seen and she thought he might not come at all. She left it as long as she dared before heading out with her hood pulled up to disguise her face.

The warehouse district was grim and grey against the dying sunlight. The sky was soon glowing a ruby red, pregnant with warning. Her stomach ached with a knot of nervous feelings. Her shoulders shook with growing anger.

She had made her way inside the warehouse, the one which she had been instructed to go from the note. Dressed in black, she carried only her bag with her but instead of clothes, notes and books she had mortar and pestle, carefully packed herbs and roots. The fox snake vibrated in her pocket, twisting around her fingers.

She entered through the front, the doors gaping like a mouth. It was dark inside and she was seemingly alone.

She lay her bag down gathered the supplies Cal had given to her, she clenched her teeth, taking shallow puffs of air, trying to deny the heady scents of the things she ground together. She dropped the pestle and it clattered to the floor, the sound echoed.

Someone was singing softly beneath their breath, _That Ole Devil Called Love_, she hadn't heard it at first but the melody struck her ears, it made Alex shiver with unease. He was here.

"I knew you'd come," Gideon Parasyn's descended from above her head. He must have been on the distant upper deck watching her work as she crouched over her collection of spices. His voice accompanied by a delighted clap of his hands. "I thought I'd lose you in Singapore but you are wonderfully persistent."

She sat back scooping up a handful of the fiery powder she'd created.

"Oh don't bother with your stitched together spells this time, baby, this thing is bigger than you can conceive." He said, she could hear him walk down the staircase, she could feel the vibrations through the metal grating that made up the floor.

"Really, want to tell me about it?" She asked trying to buy time.

She had run into it before in Spain when it had possessed a street child called Bettina. With the slim knowledge she had gained from her time with a Lukumi Babalowu, she had foolishly tried to exorcise Bettina but it had only lead to the deformity of the girl's flesh, the demon escaped unscathed and thoroughly amused.

His laugh echoed the breadth of the warehouse and resonated intimately inside her chest.

"I've always loved the way your heart beats when you get nervous." Parasyn licked his skinny lips as if he could roll the rhythm of her organ on his tongue.

He had almost cleared the stair case and she stood, careful to keep her one hand carefully concealed and clenched tight.

"You look good enough to eat." He smiled.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"I wanted to see you."

"Why now? Why here?"

"Why not now? Why not here? It's as good a place as any."

Alex began to move away as he approached, slowly retreating deeper into the darkness.

The snake had escaped her pocket and was slithering hypnotically toward Parasyn. Alex dove for it, smothering it in the spicy mixture clinging it to her chest, Parasyn's inhuman eyes were fixed to her, its tongue darting like the snake, mocking her.

"Interesting choice of pet."

Her head whipped up and she stared at the demon, she could see it roiling and rippling behind Parasyn's flesh. Nergal. It was his name as humans understood it.

Parasyn lifted his head, nostrils flaring as he sniffed. "I enjoy our games, girl but it is not time to enter the final level."

Alex had no idea what he was saying and she saw from the periphery of her vision, Cal's brown leather duster, his silhouette as he slithered on the upper deck. He was prone on the grating, his shotgun held in both hands trained on Parasyn who had not seen him yet.

Parasyn's nostrils flared as he picked up a new scent, Cal's scent.

"Gideon," she called out.

He turned to her with a smile. "It's too late, baby."

"I haven't even begun." She produced a gun in record time, pulling the trigger before the demon could react. Suspended by his disbelief, the bullet pierced his black heart, the dark matter pureeing in the cavern of his chest.

The human shell crumpled to the ground in a heap of expensive linen.

Alex's heart was in her throat.

The remains began to reanimate , moving unsteadily to stand.

Alex was on her knees. Quassia chips, thistle, mandrake root...Was that enough? Too much? She swore under her breath as she concocted her potion. Quassia chips, thistle, mandrake root. She watched Cal putting together his spell from the corner of her eye, he was taking too long.

Parasyn's flesh and matter was stitching itself back together, Nergal shining in its dead eyes. A jerk of its crooked wrist and Cal was flung like a rag doll from the upper level to the ground.

"I have come a very long way." Nergal gargled in a delighted way. "A very long way to be with you."

Alex didn't understand and ignored his taunting as she pressed on trying to form the foreign words, Cal had scrawled on the crumpled paper.

"...may I be given the power of the words of Hecate..."

"Humans can't activate a Witch spell." Nergal was utterly feminine as he cackled.

"...It is not I who speak them but Hecate..."

She crumpled in her fist as Nergal's wicked laugh seemed to grow louder and louder.

"So mote it be." Cal rasped.

There was a sizzling. A terrible stench that rose to greet her and she collapsed to the floor, covering her mouth and nose with her hand.

She began to crawl. Only seeing the sizzling burst of light from the periphery of her vision. She shuffled on hands on knees to Cal's prone body. She covered him with her own, waiting for the cacophonous noise to die down.

Cal had slipped back into unconsciousness after he had spoken those words.

Slowly, irresistibly the demon spirit departed into the fabric of the ether and the core of its magic began to dissipate slowly in wisps of tasteless smoke.

She flung the fox snake toward him but did not see it land. A strange language came from her lips, the words seemed pulled out of her, her breath escaping her before she had time to revive her lungs.

Her body felt as it were being stretched. Used. Suspended on string that were pulling her tortuously toward the place she was willing the demon spirit to reach: the body of the snake.

Endless moments passed where her words deteriorating to almost meaningless sounds, slow and heavy and significant.

The demon-spirit would not leave the earthly realm, it would exist in the complex tapestry of the air, the organic flesh of the fox snake who was cautiously coiled on the ground. Now the demon would have to wait, it would have to bide its time, choose its moment to return, seek help.

He could not be killed by conventional means nor would her dime store tricks solve the problems of manifesting demons.

Nergal had murdered her father, possessed his flesh.

After tracking him for such a length, it had become excruciating clear that the level of Nergal's possession would mean death for Dr. Parasyn and though Alex had spared a small thought for his loving family, this was the best solution.

Through the calm and the silence erupted a voice. She looked about her trying to divine who was speaking but it was the terrifying familiar voices of her mind.

They grew in pace and pitch and echoed fiercely in her head and through the pain she managed to scramble back to Cal's side checking for a pulse. It was faint but it was there and she half collapsed on top of him until the cacophony had quit ricocheting about her skull.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine:

Alex was hunched in her seat, sat beside the prone figure of Cal Radford. His body was spread out on Madam Lao's kitchen table, bare chest exposed and sprinkled with root shavings and herbs. She held his cold hand in her own, stroking his cold, long, fine fingers.

Madam Lao shuffled through the beaded curtain, the sudden sound caused the fox snake to wriggle and hiss in its Perspex cage which sat on the distant counter. Alex cast a sidelong glare at the snake.

The Madam thrust packets and jars into Alex's arms. "Dress him three times a day at the tide of the sun: east, mid, west. Understand?"

Alex nodded wordlessly. She had not spoken a word since she had left the warehouse.

"I'll bring the car round." Faye-Kam murmured from behind the beads, her dark eyes glowing ominously in the semi-darkness, eyes straying to Cal's half-nude body on her mother's kitchen table before departing.

Alex glanced back at Cal's face, pasty skin beaded with fresh drops of sweat. She could barely see his chest rise and fall.

Madam Lao busied herself with Cal's wounded shoulder and replaced the compress on his head.

The sight of him hurt again made it hard for her to think instead she watched Madam Lao's wrinkled hands, the skin yellow, waxy but deft in their work.

"May I use your phone, Madam?" Alex asked softly.

The old woman mumbled something and Alex slipped through the beaded curtain feeling weak on her feet. She slumped in the doorway, wrapped her hand around the plastic and pressed her lips to the mouthpiece waiting for someone to pick up.

"What?" The gruff voice on the other end sounded irritated, impatient.

"Please send my apologies to Mrs Parasyn," she said softly and slowly allowing moments of silence for the message to sink in.

"Is it done?"

Alex grit her teeth. "No."

"I suspected as much."

"Soon."

"Sure."

"Sure." She replied and hung up the phone gently.

She could imagine the face of the man on the other end. Thick folds of fat overlapping, making him wheeze and splutter as he spoke. His voice was a rich baritone, the unmistakable tone of Alastor, Pope's chief officer in the city.

She raised a hand to her head as if she could massage away the ache slowly forming behind her eye.

A wad of bills were half hidden beneath the lamp on the circular table. She stared at them a long while, a lull of whispers encouraging her fingertips. She snatched the money and slid it into her pocket.

When she returned to the kitchen, Madam Loa was watching her with pinched lips, wiping her wrinkly hands on a blood stained rag. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's perfectly fine, thank you, Madam." She replied taking up her place beside Cal who was now squirming in his sleep.

"I worry."

"I'm fine." She insisted.

"This boy-."

"Cal."

Madam Lao nodded and a hand hovering over his torso, freshly bandaged, ready for transport.

Alex nodded.

"He looks after you." The Madam said.

"I look after myself." She replied quickly and firmly.

The woman shook her head, no. A horn honked out front, Faye-Kam had pulled the car round and Alex sighed with thought of having to transport Cal back to her hotel. "Thank you, Madam, I think I should go."

Before she could escape the woman grasped her arm with surprising strength. "It's your turn to look after this witch or he will-"

"Let me go." She snatched her arm back, recoiled at the woman's icy touch that seemed to penetrate through to her very bones. Alex walked away before the woman could finish.

*

Faye-Kam's eyes flicked constantly to the rear view mirror where Alex was sprawled in the backseat, propping up an unconscious Cal Radford who had slept through the commotion of packing him into the backseat with a gentle wheeze.

"What?" Alex challenged as they stopped at a light, freeing Kam to openly stare.

"Nothing." Came her petulant reply.

Alex folded her arms around Cal's neck and shoulders like a necklace of limbs. She took comfort in the solid warmth of his body and the reassuring rise and fall of his chest. She rested her chin on the crown of his head and breathed in the scent of the witch, thoroughly relieved he was still alive. That they were both still alive.

Though she remained deeply unsettled that Nergal was now nowhere to be seen. Madam Lao had confirmed in a broken way that the snake she had was merely a snake. It could be anywhere by now, anything.

She touched Cal's cool cheek and his eyes flickered open. She smiled down at him.

"Is that your new man?" Kam erupted as the red light turned green and she floored it, they were picking up speed, the sound of the engine loud and tyres hitting potholes and ditches hard.

"Slow down." Alex demanded through clenched teeth.

"He's cute. What little whore house did you get him from?"

Alex stared incredulously at the girl's reflection in the rear view mirror. "Are you out of your mind?"

"You have a habit of breaking your boy toys, doesn't it get tedious?"

The old hatred reared its ugly head and in her cruel expression Kam reminded Alex so much of her brother. The seams of Alex heart begun to unravel with the memories that filled her mind. Tears glazed her green eyes and Kam snorted in disgust. "You don't deserve our help."

"You don't understand." Alex broken voice was barely heard over the rev of the engine.

"Isn't that convenient."

"Stop this."

"I'm sorry. Have I gone too far?"

Even as the girl spoke the car began to grow hot. Smoke seemed to rise from Kam's grip on the steering wheel and she screamed, yanking her hands off the wheel the car began to spin out of control.

Between pain and self preservation Kam forced herself to grab the wheel and ease into the spinning until they stopped thankfully unharmed by the side of the road.

Alex had a strong hold on Cal who remained unconscious through the commotion. Her grip on him was hard, her eyes sealed shut, she couldn't bear to watch. A sudden burst of voices suddenly invaded her mind, a scorching breeze lifted hair from her face.

Both girls say gasping for air for some moments before Alex regained her wits. Something hit the bonnet of the car, both their eyes snapped up to see a large crow considering them through the windshield.

Light gleamed off of its sable feather, it cocked its head before taking flight.

Wide eyed and heart beating hard, Alex reached blindly for the door handle, the plastic was warm beneath her palm. She fell out, half collapsed into the street and with only a moments hesitation stood to drag Cal away.

She left Kam hunched over the steering wheel staring at her burnt, reddened hands.

*

Cal was whimpering unconsciously as she tucked in the remaining tail of the bandage, that bound the stinking collection of herbs, close to his torso. Madam Loa had guaranteed that it would keep him whole, Cal had woken briefly and fallen asleep as she worked.

"Cal," she whispered stroking the hair at his temple. Madam Loa's voice persisting in her mind _It's your turn to look after him_. "Cal, can you hear me?"

He mumbled something and slowly she saw the trails of tears glitter in the dim light. He was crying.

She grasped his arms and felt the hardness of his muscles, the heat of his skin. "Cal, wake up." Fear froze her heart. The Madam's words haunted her and she kept hold of him. "Wake up."

He cleared his throat, eyes opening to slits, "What's up darlin'?" His voice was hoarse, a painful thing to hear but incredibly beautiful.

She shook her head. "I was worried." Her throat thickened with tears.

"Where are we?"

"Hotel." A different place, badly lit with twin beds and a minibar. Her eyes searched the four dark corners, floral wall paper, floral bed spreads, floral prints hanging bent on the walls.

Cal tried to sit up but she pushed him down, fingers lingering on his skin. It took him a while before he gathered the energy to speak. "It'll be fine and dandy in a couple of hours." He smiled. "Worried about me?"

She shook her head again. "I didn't say thank you did I?"

"No, you didn't."

She nodded and left him on the bed closing the door behind her.


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Alex was dreaming. The thunderous sound of dragon wings beating above her head. The glorious sight of those sable wings as they eclipsed the sun sending shafts of light fleeing to the ends of the earth.

Her knees were pressed to the soil. Rich, dark, fertile soil that darkened her skin like war paint. She bled. Hot, sticky blood fell in rivulets towards the dirt, a matrimony was taking place between her blood and the dirt. Her hands were raised, communing with the draughts of air hurled by the dragon flight above. Acolyte of the ancients, bride of the magic and earth.

A storm was coming. She could taste it in the air, the clouds pregnant with rain and even as she thought her mouth filled with water and she was suffocating. The rains began to fall but it was no ordinary rain, it was red rain, blood rain.

A deluge of rich rain bathed everything, filling her inside and out.

The earth softly disappeared beneath her body and she was being swept away in a powerful current of rich, dark blood. Panic abruptly infused her and screaming she reached out through the current to take hold of a craggy rock surface.

Pressing her face to the cool stone the currents calmed and cooed and she was half floating, half drowning in blood. Those voices slid through her mind, radiated through her being and suddenly deafening like both the beating of great wings and the rush of great waters.

A icy hand descended to enfold her fingers which were struggling to grip into the stone. _The flow of the river shows us the current of our lives, Sarima. _This voice was different. _Take my hand._

Even as she wanted to reach out, the voices seemed to engulf her, infuse her with turmoil and indefinable knowledge of who she was. A woman. A creature of the elements. A queen.

The beating of sable wings, the rock itself began to tremble beneath the savage beat of wings…the dragon…the crow…

She was pinned to the rock, the uneven surface of the stone breaking her skin, the bitter sweetness of a body pressed between her thighs grinding her harder into the rock. Tears and passion overwhelm her until she couldn't catch a breath.

Alex's eyes snapped open and she gasped for air, rubbing her face to remove the sickly feeling of dry blood and dirt and hot hands from her body. Cal towered above her. "It's okay, Alex, it's me." He whispered and gently stroked her bare shoulder. "There's nothing there, it's just a dream."

She shook her head, no. Whispered, "this was different."

He leant forward to smooth wisps of hair away from her eyes and her lips twitched into a small uneasy smile. "You're okay?"

He nodded.

She sat up, wiping the cold sweat from her brow before turning her attention to his chest, prying open the bandage, nose wrinkling against the stench of Madam Loa's herbs. "How does it feel?" She asked. It was too dark to take proper stock of his injuries.

"It stinks something rotten."

He winced as she adjusted the bandage back over his ribs. "It's healing fine, Cal."

He scooted closer toward her on the bed. "What were you dreaming about, darling?"

She rubbed her head as a dull ache eased its way between her eyes, the ache that heralded the coming of the voices. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms about her knees. "It's crazy."

He didn't respond to that.

"Do you remember what…happened?" She said thrusting her chin toward his chest.

He shook his head, no. He touched his bandage as if to test the solidity of his own chest and winced again.

Alex swallowed.

He stared at her for a long time, it was as if he could sense the lingering last sensations of her dream, as if the path of his eyes were the hands that had gripped her. It was something so real it lingered into the waking hour and she rubbed at her skin as if to rid herself of the feelings.

"Your kind heal tremendously fast." Alex murmured.

"Only iron can truly harm us." He whispered.

She shrugged thinking he shouldn't be telling her that, thinking even a witch can't be able to recover this fast.

He continued to stare.

She felt at once shy and reserved, painfully aware of her own swelling flesh, the rise of heat, the blush working deep in her cheeks and chest. She dragged the sheets further up her body to conceal herself.

"Alex?"

She refused to look up at him.

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers and he was startled to find she did not resist. "Alex." He spoke against her mouth before they shared a kiss. He had waited so long. She had protected herself so far.

"Shut up." She whispered.

It started gently. He touched her gently as if afraid she'd melt away beneath his hands. She didn't. She simmered and burned beneath him. The great beating of wings filled her ears and bled seamless into the mellifluous whispers.

With one hand on the small of his back she felt the sweat gather on his skin.

She dissolved beneath his hot flesh and the sudden roar of voices exploded in her skull.

*

When Cal woke daylight streamed through the window leaving him in a pool of harsh light. Alex was gone leaving only a bloodstain on the wrinkled sheets.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven:

"I've come to see your mistress." Alex Burrows stood two heads shorter than the vampire before her. His face was set like stone, his eyes not deigning to set upon her face.

"Do you have an appointment?"

Alex shook her head, no. "She'll want to see me."

It was not long before she sat before Tasi Malavazos. Tasi stood in front of her desk, half sitting, half standing regarding Alex with an odd quirk to her bright red lips.

It was a subterranean palace, a poor imitation of her head quarters on the topside but she was comfortable. Her people moving with cool efficiency around the place as if it were business as usual. But then, Alex supposed, the show must go on.

"I thought I might see you again." Tasi spoke with a fallacious smile. "But as to the why of this meeting I must admit I do not know."

"I need to leave the city tonight."

Tasi's good humour dissipated. "Are you sure your business has finished here, Alexandra?" She said her face impossible to read.

Alex swallowed a lump in her throat her senses awash with a sense of warning. "I need to leave the city."

Tasi looked to one side as if listening to something intently. "You can't afford to leave the city."

Alex had no money, this was true. "When I get to a safe hold in Calabria I can wire you as much as you would need-"

"I have not named the price, dearest."

Alex froze, Tasi turned her face back and the eerie vampiric glow had taken possession of her eyes. The vampire smiled. "Ah, did you think that I only deal in cash? There are many costs in life, Alexandra, we all must pay a price."

"What price?" Alex asked in a whisper.

Tasi stepped close, breathing her in in great gulps of air, revelation dawned in her eyes and she smiled that grotesque red split of the mouth. "You're with child."

Alex stood, knocking her chair to the ground, she looked about the room as if trying to identify the child Tasi had spoken of but there was no one there save the two of them. Tasi's pressed her cold palm to Alex's stomach.

"Don't touch me," Alex slapped her hand away, heart hammering in her chest, voices rising in her skull.

"I can feel its vibrations Alexandra, darling. You've not paid for protection of your bastard as well and this changes the face of our little game."

Alex was already walking out the door but Tasi was suddenly in front of her, arms folded across her skinny chest smiling at Alex in her infuriating way. Alex's mind could barely comprehend. Pregnant? It had been only a few days she and Cal had had sex. She still felt a lingering regret, the suspicion of spells being woven in the night. She couldn't believe it. She hadn't seen Cal since that night.

"Oh believe it, dear." Tasi said her expression suddenly turning vicious. "Does your dear old benefactor know of your indiscretions? Does Pope know what you've done?"

The name Pope made Alex's blood run cold and the voices rise to a scream. She found it hard to focus, her palms balled into fists, fingernails biting into the flesh of her palm, drawing blood and she desperately sought some clarity.

"Let you out of the city?" Tasi laughed, walking circles around her now, fangs fully extended eyes gleaming the cold silver of a killing blade. "That would not be wise of me now would it, Alexandra?"

Alex closed her eyes and for one instant, when she thought the voices and Tasi's words would make her skull implode, there came a perfect and profound silence.

"No." Alex said. Even as the syllable formed on her tongue she felt a great gathering of heat expel from her body leaving her cold, calm, and silent as a tomb.

She opened her eyes and from the periphery of her vision she could see Tasi on the floor, her arms flung up to protect her face, the skin of her arms had turned black as if from a great degree of heat.

Alex's lips fell open and words spilt out of her lips, she knew vaguely by the sound it was a dialect of old Greek. She did not know what she said but it held weight with Tasi and once the words had been taken from her mouth she resumed control of herself.

Alex walked out of the office and into the twilight.

*

The sun was not yet coming up and Alex sat in the shade of a stoop, hood pulled up over her head to help shield her sight from the dark time of a new day.

A car pulled up by the side of the curb, she didn't have to look up to know who it was. The door was flung open but no one had touched it. Cal was staring at the road ahead and he didn't say a word.

She needed him this one last time, she thought as if she could believe it. She should never have called him. But she needed to do one last thing in the city before she left, Tasi's blessing or no.

The moment she set eyes on the grim set of his jaw, the way the street light played on his green eyes making them shine like glass memories of that night hit her like a fist in the gut. A tenderness so alien to her had possessed her so thoroughly she could hardly believe it were true.

What if it wasn't true, a small voice in her mind that was all her own materialised. What if it were magic that had brought you to this? It was easier to believe Cal had seduced her with tricks and treats, easier to get angry than to face the truth.

The truth was she was in love with him. The truth was she was carrying his unborn child.

Her stomach was turning with the thought of telling him the truth so she bit her tongue, ducked her head and concentrated on the task at hand.

Alex's eyes never met Cal's and he didn't dare open his mouth on the whole journey. He'd quietly agreed to drive her to the docks, back to the warehouse where she had last seen Nergal. She felt only the slight uneasiness of taking him there, after what Madam Loa had said, and after what they had shared that night.

It was a dangerous thing to do.

He pulled up in a discreet corner and cut the engine. The gentle ebb and flow of the ocean sang, there was no one else there. It was 2am she didn't expect anyone to arrive for a few more hours.

"Stay here." She said.

"Like hell I will." He got out of the car, slamming the door closed.

At any other time she would have argued with him but she couldn't bring herself to articulate her frustration or her fear. She ducked under a loose sheet of chicken wire and climbed through a cracked window into the dark, dank innards of the warehouse.

She was sure between Parasyn and the Tribunal that this place had been thoroughly cleaned. Every inch of evidence both physical and metaphysical would have been removed. For all intent and purpose it should be an ordinary warehouse for hire.

She had to be sure Nergal was no longer there and whether he had left a slimy trail to his next victim.

Cal lit a cigarette singing _That Ole Devil Called Love_ softly under his breath.

She stopped short, turned to stare at him and he continued to hum. He turned his back to her blowing halos of smoke into the air and she shook her head to clear her thoughts. She went into the warehouse with less caution and ceremony.

The place was dark and once again seemed empty. She was right, the whole place had been cleaned, there was no trace of her powdery concoction, none of Cal's blood on the floor, no evidence Gideon Parasyn had been blown away.

She turned in circles on the floor until she was satisfied she was alone.

She took off her hood and turned to leave. It was then she saw the man standing as if expecting her. No, it wasn't a man. Otherworldly energy swirled about him in an unyielding rage. She could see it, taste it, was oppressed by it. He was a vampire.

She was not compelled to run and so stood with her head titled to one side. Forced to squint through the magic and through to his youthful face. "Are you with-" Trying so hard to remember a name.

His eyes. Eyes like amethyst and hatred. They touched her to the core. They were as familiar as her own reflection.

Unable to stop herself she reached out a hand, "I know you." The sight of her outstretched hand brought a deep kind of shame as if she had somehow surrendered herself.

The vampire's icy iron grip was around her bare throat and she fought to breath, choking and clawing at him like a victim. With his touch came an inexplicable wash of sadness and it brought tears bursting from her eyes, snot flowing from her nostrils.

Whispers from deep inside her soul, an ancient language, a different woman's voice but still her own escaped her, velvet honey tones of supplication. Alex did not speak with her mouth.

"Sarima," he replied and released her.

She fell into a heap on the floor, her body overwrought with emotion, her rational mind fighting to emerge.

When she had the wits to look about her she found the creature gone.


	13. Chapter 12

Yes the title has changed _again_. I think I'm going to stick with Samsara though, it works in the long run. No offence is intended by using Samsara as a story title. Any comments, feedback or politely phrased criticisms would be welcome guys. _This is a draft of chapter twelve and may be updated in the next few days._

Chapter Twelve:

Warm slivers of sun flickered through the dusty blinds, hot against her cheeks and she blinked her eyes awake. Her mouth felt thick, tasted rancid and she pressed her face into the soft bounty of pillow to smother herself.

"Good afternoon." Cal murmured and she groaned at the feel of his hot hand on the back of her neck.

"What hit me?"

"No, darling. You just passed out."

Alex tried to sit up and felt an instant and profound wave of nausea cripple her.

"You don't look so good." Cal murmured touching her forehead as if to gauge her temperature. "I think you drank too much."

She blinked up at him. She didn't drink, couldn't drink, she took too many pills to ever touch the stuff. Cal must have been lying though she couldn't detect any hint of irony in his voice. She swivelled her neck from side to side to take in the sight of the crisp, clean, self-contained hotel room.

"I'll be okay in a minute." She lied.

"What's the rush?" He sounded irritated. Though the anger suddenly dispelled as his face cracked into a grin that almost split is jaw in two.

She sat up slowly to find that she hurt all over. Her heart was racing from the effort. She had been sweating terribly, the sheets were wet and pungent with it. What day was this? How long had she been unconscious? Was this normal? She grasped her stomach as if she could cup the foetus, resenting it already.

"Put your feet up babe and relax, no one's going to find you here if that's what you're worried about."

_I have a lot to worry about_, she thought as she grit her teeth through wave after wave of bone jarring pain. She didn't like his tone when he spoke, neither had her voices it seemed as the sound lifted in her ear, a current of warning in their breath.

She was almost overwhelmed with too much going on in her skin. She stubbornly swung her legs over the side of the bed and held her hand up to ward off Cal's approach. "Don't touch me."

For an instant she thought she saw his eyes blaze with colour, hues of red and gold like a burnished sun…_but that was impossible_. Blinking his eyes remained simply eyes. Simply his.

He shrugged and walked away.

She had her eyes fixed to the back of his head and a soul-sinking feeling possessed her, she should run, escape to the far ends of the earth from him. But it was only Cal. She dropped her head in her hands squeezing fistfuls of greasy hair. "What did I do last night?"

When she raised her head she noticed her books piled beside a chair, her battered duffel bag tucked beneath it. He had moved her things, without her knowledge and say so, it was as if since that night he somehow thought he owned her.

When she turned back to him he was standing in front of a small mirror flicking up tufts of blond hair, smoothing down his cheeks and lips.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean, babe?"

Her teeth clenched and she swallowed a mouthful of sick before she asked, "Why are you preening, Cal?"

"I ain't doin' no such thing."

An intercom buzzed and Cal stepped forward to answer it. There was a pause and she heard his voice turn sultry and seductive. "Yeah, I'll be right down, baby."

Alex eyebrow raised, both curious and suspicious. Her heart was now thundering in her chest like a guilty secret.

He turned to her slowly as if afraid to reveal himself, his eyes carefully avoiding her stare, "I have a date. You remember, Penelope?" The waitress from the Diner.

She felt a coldness possess her all at once. Strange, alien feelings of…betrayal. The whispers rose in volume, a gentle taunting at first, cruel words, humiliating her. She blinked appearing as if she heard nothing at all.

"Go," she said quickly, too quickly.

"You can take care of yourself."

She didn't reply, she stood her pins trembling though she managed to turn her back to him and hide the fine shaking of he shoulders. She heard his sigh and the sound of creasing fabric as he shrugged on his jacket and left the apartment quietly.

When she heard his footsteps retreat in the hall an ice-hot feeling charged beneath her skin slowly leak in salty tears down her cheeks. Her legs were shaky, unable to hold the sum of her weight and she collapsed whispering, "I guess its just you and me kid."

It was hours before Alex could muster the strength to dress and walk and she found how incredibly hungry she was.

The voices had given her a reprieve which was a relief as she had no Ziprasidone to quiet the cacophony.

So face veiled by her black hood, she dragged her feet, moving slowly and treading in pools of light as if this too could ward away the People that spied her from the nooks and crannies of the night. It was a poor disguise in the night because the People could see clearly as if it were day.

She felt as if there were someone watching. Eyes. Eyes that penetrated deep into her soul. She blinked and saw in brief flashes eyes the colour of violets, heliotropes, mulberry…

She was not safe but she could not leave the city yet and she could not starve in Cal's hotel room.

She stepped into the nearest grocery store, not too far from the Aurora Hill Hotel that Cal had booked them into under the pseudonyms Sid and Nancy Smith. The Pakistani clerk eyed her warily and she took down her hood down to reveal a pale, gaunt face. She offered a watery smile and he responded with a troubled shake of his head.

She shuffled into the centre aisle and reached for some packets of potato chips and chocolate bars, her eyes wandering ravenously about the store. It was full of junk food, cheap tinned food, micro-meals and toilet paper. There was a surfeit of alcohol stored in backlit fridges.

She wandered to the back of the store, placing some of the smaller produce into her pockets as she went.

The door beeped signifying incoming customers and Alex froze. An uneasy feeling made her stop mid step and she crouched in the back between the Tiger beer boxes and two day old milk. She listened to the purposeful stride down the aisles her heartbeat thickening in her tongue as they approached.

She began to tip toe toward the cash register, the Pakistani man leaning forward, staring at her progress. He muttered something beneath his breath and she knew she must have looked incredibly daft.

She threw a few dollars up at him and he cried out, she bolted for the door, stumbling, handfuls of bags falling from her grasp.

She tripped on the cement sidewalk and looked up to see a flash of sable wings, the echo of a bird. She squeezed her eyes tight and let out a cry of frustration. Recovering quickly she forced herself to her feet.

She ran a zigzag path through the streets, like a wild woman, a punk, a junkie in the throes of a bad a trip. She took the long climb up the staircase to the apartment, afraid to step into the narrow shaft of the elevator.

As she drew close to the hotel room draw she knew something was wrong, she pressed her ear to the wood and listened to her own staggering breath.

She knocked tentatively on the door and the hinges sang as the door opened. "Cal?"

She had left the place locked, she was of it as she stared through into the hotel room, the bedroom door was closed. A sick feeling entered her stomach and she pressed a bloody grazed hand to her mouth but it did not stop the vomit that spilt over her chin and onto the carpet as she doubled over.

She staggered further inside, using walls and furniture to aid her path, defying her instincts to turn and run.

She heard the unmistakable groan of Cal's seedy fucking and her insides revolted instantly and the contents of her stomach spilt out of her mouth in a succession of exhausting retches. The whispers that had been so forgiving for hours suddenly rose in volume, whispers that were worse than a scream.

She closed her eyes and was once again assaulted by visions of purple eyes. She grew impossibly hot. She felt as if she were choking on searing smoke. She tripped toward the bathroom barely managing to relieve herself of the hooded jacket before she fell into the bathtub.

The purple eyes stared as her eyelids flickered open and shut.

She felt as if she were drowning in invisible smoke. She grasped the taps and pulled on them until icy water beat down on her head.

The purple eyes opened to the full length and breadth of her vision.

She sat in the shower, the frigid waters stealing the tears and bloodstains from her face. She sat sobbing and grasping her stomach as if she could twist the zygote into non-existence.

*

Cal slapped her hard about the face and she came too in an instant.

"For fuck's sake." Cal growled in her face, grasping her shoulders and shaking her hard. "Just stay awake."

She tried to push him away but she was too weak. Exhausted and aching from hours of crying and throwing up. He made her flesh crawl, each molecule of contact brought the irresistible urge to wretch again and again.

She was frightened. Frightened because Cal was not the same as he used to be, all that had made him dear to her was gone. She thought she was his eyes harden to molten spheres, his lip lift to show unusual points to his teeth. She blinked and he was normal.

She tried to sit up.

"There's something wrong with you." Cal insisted with a little shake.

She shook her head feebly, no.

He raised his hand and struck her about the face. Her teeth knocked together and she could taste her own blood. "Why can't you fucking behave yourself?"

Her mouth opened and closed, her vision swimming from the slap. He suddenly held her to him, laying butterfly kisses about her face. Almost chanting, "oh baby, oh baby."

She squirmed trying to leave his grasp but he was impressively strong. Inhumanly strong.

He pushed her back until her head made contact with the slick tiles of the bathroom floor. He leant over her, crushing her, breath hot against her face. "Why don't you just be a good little _girl_."

He began to tear at her clothes, rip open her shirt and pull down her jeans until she was naked and she screamed and struggled to no avail. His expression was cruel but intent, his jaw straining as he clenched his teeth.

He wrapped her in a towel, mopping her brow with his own sleeve, cooing and concerned and this was as terrifying as his fluctuating rage.

She was already disoriented but she was also confused. Angry. Frightened. Her voices were whispering again, forever whispering, they were coaching, lulling, suggesting…"No." She cried.

She was reacting to the voices but it was Cal who grasped her by the throat.

"What did you say?" He asked, punctuating each word with a harder squeeze of her neck.

She was battling with the voices but her resistance was of no use, they were right. She knew they were right even as Cal choked her half to death.

She had to get rid of the baby.


	14. Chapter 13

_First Draft - the story needs some major overhauling, this is acknowledged and hopefully I will be able to work on this so be warned._

Chapter Thirteen:

Alex pressed a cold can of beer to her swelling eyelid and winced at the pain.

She stood before a mirror, unhappily watching her reflection: a wretched child littered in fine bruises. Her huge green eyes staring eerily from a gaunt face. She could barely recognise herself from who she was a week ago.

She had run out of pills, the voices were battling with her by night as she hung her head over a toilet bowl and retched into the early hours of the morning. She didn't sleep. She didn't eat. She constantly had an eye and ear on the door.

The thought of Pope discovering her like this was more mortifying than a smart slap about the face and so she bore it while it was necessary, before she could get out of the city.

She Remembered Tasi words: _there are many costs in life, Alexandra, we all must pay a price._ Was this the price?

The front door creaked open, she heard the familiar footfalls and she knew Cal had arrived for the night. What he did in the day she did not know, he often came in at nigh t smelling of sex and secrets. His eyes dark, dangerous and forever fixed on her as if she were a prize.

Quietly and like a phantom she moved into the next room as he entered the other.

She heard the rustling of a paper bag. "Look here what I brought."

He was met with silence.

"Babe?"

She strode past him, had to, to get near the exit. She perched on the edge of the bed and pulled on her combat boots and one of Cal's old scuffed leather jacket she had taken from the closet. She dug deep to maintain the resolve to act unaffected but she could not deny the fearful quivering of her insides.

Her mission was clear now: to get rid of the baby, to get out of the city, to get out of this alive.

"So did you find out anything interesting from your stuffy ol' books?"

The books were gathering dust from where Cal had left them tucked beneath a seat. She had been too afraid to touch the books, she no longer trusted what was in them. Outdated knowledge of exorcisms, spells, demons that had adapted over thousands of years.

She fiddled with the laces on her boots, laces slipping through her clumsy fingertips. She didn't look up at him but watched him from the periphery of her vision as he watched her. His mouth moving into a cruel expression.

His voice dropped all pretence of good humour until it didn't sound like Cal at all. "Look at me." He demanded.

She busied herself restraining her hair up tight in a bun with a piece of elastic, keeping on the move, anything not to look into his face. "I have to go."

"Go?" He laughed, high pitched and unnatural. "Go where, baby?"

She didn't respond.

He grasped her shoulder and held her. Her shoulder was trembling beneath the incredible strength of his grip. His fingertips cold, she could feel it through the fabric of the jacket.

There was the merest echo of whispers slithering through her psyche.

She pulled herself out of his grasp. He was staring at her back, she could feel his eyes boring holes between her shoulder blades. This was not the Cal that she knew. Usually all patience and good manners. Lop sided smiles and small brushes of the hand. This was not Cal.

"Alex-"

The phone rang.

"That'd be for you." She said and took the opportunity to flee, slamming the door behind her and taking to the stair case with a speed she hadn't moved before.

Every instinct screamed for her to run. _Run far away. _Preoccupied, teeth clenched in a determined way she barely noticed the waitress, Penelope, give the lingering stare of the jealous girlfriend variety as Alex pushed passed her on the stairs.

She walked the streets knowing she had to calm down, try and steady her nerves for what she was about to do but her heart was racing with guilt, fear, and uncertainty. Her mind was caught up in wild images, the phantom of fists against her face, a foot in the ribs, the horrid sounds of Cal fucking Penelope.

She walked, preoccupied head bowed, arms folded over her chest as if she could contain the venom filling her mind. Her heart hurt pervaded all other senses and priorities. She stood at the crossing, lifting her face up, waiting for the walk sign to light up.

As if from a dream or the darkest of nightmares he stood. Perfectly still and silent.

It was the vampire she had seen at the bay warehouse, the same vampire that had rescued her and the fox snake, the one that had broken into her apartment. His eyes. Mulberry… heliotropes…violets…Everything inside her went silent.

She stared unabashedly, inner turmoil forgotten. "Who are you?" She cried over the traffic.

He walked calmly into the crowd as if he hadn't heard.

She followed him. Running, shoving, desperate to keep up, fear that she'd lose him. Her now frantic heartbeat filled her ears, drowning out the sound of the street, the sound of honking horns as she dodged traffic to get closer to him.

"Wait," she called out.

Nausea rose and she ignored it. The voices rose too, always loud or loudest when this vampire drew near. The insistency as if trying to communicate a message in a myriad of languages she didn't understand. She ignored them too.

Like a beacon, the vampire shone through the din of the evening crowd. Immaculately dressed and standing with such self possession, at odds with the bustling crowd. She was undeniably drawn to him, mesmerized by him.

This was not the first time she had seen him in a crowded street. She had seen him before and after each time she seemed to forget she had seen him at all.

"Please." She heard herself say.

*

Alex's scent was on the sheets, her subtle perfume, the soap and creams she used, it all reached out to him, distracting him from the woman sitting beside him.

"What's wrong, Cal?" Penelope was pouting, finding all her techniques of seduction had flatly failed to entice him.

He shook his head in an absent way, his eyes set around the room as if trying to pick up clues as to where Alex had gone, when she would be back.

The phone rang.

"Hello."

"Hello, I was hoping to get hold of Ms. Burrows. Alexandra?"

He was about to make some excuse and put down the phone but thought better of it. Weaving unspoken suggestions through the receiver he asked ever so sweetly. "May I ask who's calling?"

There was only a moment's hesitation before the woman was compelled to answer. "My name's Rita McClean."

"Where are you calling from?"

"From the Harmony Medical Centre, sir."

His heart ticked in his throat but he urged her on further. "She's not available at the moment. Do you want me to take a message?" He pushed the suggestion into her mind.

"Can you take a message for me?"

"Sure, darlin."

"We've had to reschedule her appointment to next week Thursday because she didn't make it on time we've had to give her spot to someone else."

"Appointment at the Harmony Med Clinic?"

"You tell her time's running short now, we'd like to carry out the procedure as soon as possible unless of course she's changed her mind which is…is fine by us."

"Thank you, Rita." He put down the phone gently.

"Cal?" Penelope reached out to touch his arm. "Who's Rita?"

"The Harmony Medical Centre."

Penelope's nose wrinkled, "an abortion clinic?"

Cal tore himself from Penelope's weak hold, teeth gritted and fury rippling through his very molecules like glorious fire. Hell played across his face.

*

Alex followed like a helpless rat to the piper's tune and was lead to a seclude alley, surrounded either side with boarded up windows and pungent refuse. There were too many shadows but he was there.

He stood at the end of the alleyway casting the largest shadow of all. He was like a monument though there was barely anything remarkable about him in which to describe it. It was more a feeling, an instinct, the fabric of her soul was reacting in a way that she had never experienced and she had seen many marvellous and terrifying things.

She had to remind herself to breath before she gathered the courage to speak. "Tell me who you are."

Her pulse was now thudding, her head swimming as she spoke and she picked a zig zag path slowly toward him. "Please."

The voices began then, steadily gaining volume, insidious whispers, thousands of them, crowding her mind, drawing her forward, she was barely aware of her feet touching the floor. His mouth moved forming that word once again, "Sarima."

"Tell me why you've been following me."

His features were perfect, timeless, pale as if made of marble. His veins were dark, she could see the network of stolen blood beneath his skin. His iris' perfect circles of purple. He spoke language beyond her knowledge and yet she knew what he was saying, the perfect words of hatred. Words of vengeance.

She felt her insides twist as if a great and unforgiving hand had entered her chest. She couldn't scream and could barely catch breath as the weight of his Power seemed to possess her inside.

Images burst behind her eyelids, visions of vast verdant lands, the taste of blood in her mouth and bones crushed between her palms. _Sarima._

Cradled in the vampire's arms he let her descend sweetly to the ground.

The thunderous sound of beating wings. Vast, expansive, dark visions vibrated through her skin. Her lips were working, words spilling forth in a language she did not recognise. She did not care. She could not stop…


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen:

Alex felt the sensation of hot breath tickling the back of her neck and she woke with a start. A whimper slid past her lips and the echo of her own voice made her cringe. She was in a dark, empty room that smelt of antiseptic and the bitter undercurrents of fleshy rot.

She swallowed, reaching to feel the walls and to figure out the grooves in the cool tiles beneath her.

The last thing she remembered was Cal's hands about her throat….no it was the dark, dank alleyway and the whispers of…of…The memory seemed to escape her completely. A short, sharp unexpected thought, _am I dead_?

Her throat was dry, her limbs ached, if this was being dead, it was northing more than a successions of little pains and aches. She let out a laugh, a thin hollow sound. She was still alive. Surely the dead didn't think of such things.

She didn't know where she was.

Who had brought her here: Pope, Cal, Tasi, the Tribunal? It was a mistake ever coming to San Francisco. _But what was life without a few risks?_ Her sometime motto now taunted her.

She heard the whisper of approaching footsteps, the sound of many people moving above her. She sat up with her back against the wall, mostly to help her stay upright.

There was a sharp pain at her temple, she touched it and felt the sticky residue and sting of an open wound. Shallow but there. She must have hit her head when going down. Which meant she had fallen down at some point.

The hum and click as halogen bulbs flickered and exploded into life. It bleached the room. Her eyes squeezed shut to hide the searing first sight of light.

A door creaked open and someone stepped inside. A woman, she could tell by the sweet scent and click of heels on the tiles.

She opened her eyes, vision was swimming. A shapely figure came into focus.

A short blond woman with a tanned sweet heart face stared down at her with barely concealed contempt. She was in her late twenties maybe early thirties, where there were already fine creases about her mouth. Smart linen suit. Not a vampire.

The woman continued to stare.

Alex couldn't resist taking a look down at herself. Her T-shirt was ripped exposing her stomach, jeans smeared with dirt and her boots were gone. Her own blond hair was dirty, stinking, she raked it back from her face waiting for the woman to speak.

"So this is it?" She erupted finally and her voice a harsh sound in the empty room.

Alex didn't reply.

"You're her?" She laughed, as if she'd expected more.

"Why am I here?" Alex's voice was raspy but firm.

"Many reasons I suppose." The woman began to pace, stopping every now and then to eye Alex up and down.

"Will it be quick?"

"You think you're here to die?"

"I can hope." She muttered under her breath.

The woman laughed again and it sent ripples of disgust through Alex who could feel the magic now emanating in tasteless, invisible waves. It triggered a memory, and she looked wildly about the room for signs of the purple eyed vampire.

"Who are you?" Her voice quavered.

The woman looked angry because Alex didn't know who she was.

"It's just good grace from the gods that you happen to be here at this time. I am told you're a busy little girl." The woman continued conversationally.

"I don't know who you are." Alex pressed the issue.

The woman's eyebrow quirked. Lips peeled back from her teeth. Her fist clenched and there was a crackle of witch power dancing between her fingertips like lightning.

"Belinda." Alex whispered.

Belinda and her black market witchcraft. Belinda Short was the head of the magic division in the operation run by not quite Night People, those with bastard blood who dabbled in the Night but supplied the Day with tricks and treats and addictive magical opiates. Yes, Arturo had mentioned her.

The rumour was she was waking old Powers, imprisoning them, raising the dead from their comfortable graves and harnessing big beasties and through magical rituals they would steal their essence in blessed canticles to sell to the Powerless. It was a million dollar business.

_Siphoning mojo to the highest bidder_. _Just another flesh market…_

Belinda Short nodded.

What would Belinda Short want with her? Alex couldn't fathom why, she had no Power to interest a magic market and her flesh was dime a dozen. Belinda didn't know all the players in the field otherwise she wouldn't dare take Alex like some unwanted child off the street.

"I wouldn't try to guess, Ms. Burrows." She knew what Alex was thinking but Alex knew she could not read minds.

"Then tell me."

Belinda shook her head, no.

There was a knock at the door.

Belinda's perfect white teeth clenched in momentary anger at the interruption. She went to the door to open it and Alex watched as a group of four men marched Cal into the centre of the room.

Momentary relief and then fear moved Alex. Cal was no longer an ally. Maybe he was planning something for her all along and all the years had been a rouse to trap her.

He had a grin on his face that was different from the expressions she had ever seen him wear and she stiffened visibly. He raised a hand in a wave and she felt instantly sick, her heart pumping fiercely.

Belinda did not look amused. "I suppose you've met."

Cal winked at the witch. "Me an Alex go way back, don't we, baby?"

Alex bit her tongue both angry and afraid. Cal had betrayed her. He probably had seduced her too and now she was pregnant with his bastard child. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

Belinda looked back and forth between the two. "Well, make it quick, whatever you have to do, I have an appointment in twenty minutes."

Cal moved closer to Alex clapping his hands together in an alarmingly familiar gesture. It made her think of the warehouse, of Gideon Parasyn whistling a tune, what was it again….Billy Holiday? Her jaw clenched as the realisation struck her. Cal was not Cal anymore.

In the same instant Cal grasped her by her hair and pulled her head back to expose her neck where he breathed her in deep. "I remember the time I ripped your dear old daddy to shreds, it was so sweet, so sweet. I wonder if you are as sweet now?"

He began to bend down and she could smell his rancid breath like rot and blood. As her eyes closed the whispers began and it became suddenly incredibly hot. There was a pop, the bulbs blew instantaneously and they were sitting in darkness.

Cal released his grip on her hair and fell against the tiles with a thwack.

*

The halogen bulbs shimmered to life.

She blinked to clear her vision and froze when she saw the purple eyed vampire standing over her. Cal and Belinda were gone. She didn't have time to think because she was mesmerised by his beauty, those silly vampire tricks she had otherwise schooled herself to ignore.

He continued to stare down at her in maddening silence. His lip curled in disdain. He looked at her as if she were something unworthy. What was the word they often referred to humans as…vermin. Her mortal flesh was unworthy of the earth. There was hatred there too, molten and raging.

She blinked.

His face was suddenly so close, his breath mingled with hers and the warmth of his mouth was so tempting it wanting her to lean into it, to be cradled by the imminent feeling of sex and abandon. "Sarima," he whispered and the taste of that name touched her mouth and she began to cough violently.

When she regained control of her lungs, breathing deep, her vision cleared and she was alone in the sparse cell. She found herself in the mirror, molten gold iris' staring back wide eyed and haunting, hair wild and filthy about her head like a mane, brown face rubbed with soil, blood and other things.

_Sarima._ She felt her insides clench at the thought of the name and as she blinked her normal reflection resumed and the green eyed and blond haired Alex was staring back at her.

The lights went out again.

*

"Put the lights on." Belinda's snapped.

The sound of marching footsteps in the dark and then the lights blinked to life.

Cal was standing on the far side of the room staring at Alex like a cautious animal.

"What's going on?" Belinda asked.

Alex shook her head vaguely. She was numb, drained and exhausted she could do no more than that. Her mind, her heart was bursting with thoughts of the vampire. His scent, his taste, his voice echoing through her mind dulling the sound of the voices in her skull.

"You look pale." Cal whispered with a softness in his voice that was truly Cal Radford. But it wasn't.

She touched her throat self consciously.

"We'll continue tomorrow." Belinda said.

Alex stared at Cal who had looked scared when the lights had come up. What was he scared of? Could her hallucination have been real? As thoughts raced through her mind she felt her eyelids droop. The vampire had exhausted her and so she lay her head on the cold, hard ground and slept.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen:

Alex was on the verge of passing into a long sleep. She had been in the same room for what seemed like days, weeks, months, who knew? It was a blur of hunger, vomit and darkness and the brief intercessions of Belinda Short's clipped voice over an intercom.

She had not seen Cal since.

Just when Alex thought she could take no more, between an instant of debilitating whispers grating the inside of her skull and the blinding flicker of the halogen bulbs the lights softened to something bearable and she was lulled out of her half-conscious state.

The vampire appeared. She had simply blinked and he stood in front of her.

She was conscious of her dry, cracked mouth, filthy skin and greasy hair. She moved back against the wall, hand flying to the small curve of her stomach, the other to her mouth, eyelids shutting in an attempt to block him out.

"Sarima." He breathed and her whole being turned toward him, uncontrollably compelled, eyes flying open.

It took every ounce of energy to stay routed to the spot. Her hands moved to her head, to cover her ears as the whispers rose to dizzying screams. "Who is Sarima?" Her voice was hoarse, pleading with him.

He threw back his head and laughed. He was suspended by awesome energy, the taste, scent and texture of it wrapped itself around her drawing her toward him. "You, beloved. Queen of Whores. Daughter of Dragons. Eater of Flesh and Lover of Draconi."

When she found herself in his arms an almighty scream erupted from her, but there were many voices in her throat and aeons of pain.

*

The teeth of long dead kings and finger bones of past queens were tied about her throat and she knew the macabre necklace was a mantle of her sovereignty, marking her as the Sarima. She was Ea daughter of Yam-Nahar, sovereign of Yaham, Sarima of Incendia.

Deep in the caverns of the fire mountain the tribe of Yaham resided. Hunters, flesh eaters, worshipers of blood and darkness. They were the children of the Great Dragon, Yam-Nahar firstborn amongst dragons.

She was the daughter of Dragons, embodiment of fear and flame but at that moment she trembled in fear.

"Honni." She lay her head on the older woman's knee and breathed softly, listening to the breeze whistle through the caverns. "I am scared."

The breath of the mountain was, humid, earthy, spicy.

The old woman's hand was gentle on the Sarima's brow. "Be calm, child."

"This prince of the Lotani will march upon our lands and I fear, Honni." She breathed in the scent of ancient earth, ancient magic, the sweet scent of home gathered in the woman's skin.

"We are the people of the wild forest and the mountain, Sarima. You are the first daughter of Yaham and queen of its people." Honni lifted the Sarima's face with fingertips beneath her chin. "You have no fear."

The Sarima stood and took courage from those words. "I have no fear." She whispered, though deep in her secret heart she had seen an image that had rocked her soul: the seams of her own heart had come undone and black bile had seeped until her heart withered away as if consumed by fire.

"I have no fear." She repeated.

She stood to her full height, which was not much for the Sarima who was barely out of childhood, slim, slight and smeared with soil. Honni stood too going to fetch the queen's mantle, the skin of a timber wolf.

She slid it over the Sarima's shoulders and adjusted the head over her dirty hair. The Sarima felt better, as if she were more herself beneath the skin of the wolf. Her golden eyes shone from beneath the fur, her head crowned by its large teeth.

She raised her voice. "Gesh."

A stooped figure materialised form the shadows, a young man who lay in genuflect before her, his filthy matted hair had become as thick as snakes about his face which was covered in soil and soot. "My Queen?"

"Take a message to the high son of Lotan, the Prince. Tell him of my dreams and from this we seek a peace to face what is to come." She elaborated on the detail of her dreams, for it was said the children of Yaham dreamed true dreams as they lay their head upon the soil of Incendia.

Gesh watched, riveted by her impassioned discourse and he went with haste to do his Queen's bidding.

"It is a rightful thing." Honni said.

"I have no fear." She repeated.

*

The memories shifted, clouds rolling rapidly through the sky, the sun and moon swapping places in rapid succession. Draconi, for that was the vampires name since birth, was brushing fingertips against the delicate skin, the curve of Alex's pale lashes as she witnessed the arrival of the once witch Maya and the first followers.

*

The strangers came at twilight, they moved across the land like wraiths as if their feet did not touch the ground. The Sarima had been summoned promptly, with a retinue of her strongest, they made their way down the mountainside to where the strangers had converged.

They were already surrounded, even hidden beyond the wilds the people of Yaham were couched in nature, ready to slither from the darkness and assail the strangers on the signal of the Sarima.

To many foreigners Ea would have seemed a skinny, filthy child but to one born of a witch as Maya was, Ea was an embodiment of the goddess.

The wisdom and compassion and naivety of Mother and Maiden shone from her eyes though her mouth spoke of death and the withered hand of the Crone. Though the Sarima was not one of the People, she and her people remained human worshipping their dragon god.

In another life, Maya would have been thrilled to converse with the Queen, to bond through their sisterhood as children of the goddess but venom filled her too. A bitter jealousy of the Power and family Maya had left behind stung her.

Sarima wore the fur of a wolf, it draped her shoulders like a cloak. The necklace of teeth gleamed at her neck, dappling in the moonlight a monument to her rule. Though Maya would have known she was their Queen, would have known it through to her very bones.

"You are not welcome here, thief." Though she was young, the Sarima's voice carried with authority beyond her years. She felt no fear, she had foreseen this coming for many moons, but a sadness clung to her molten gold eyes and it struck Maya to the core.

Maya had not expecting the resonance that assaulted her sensitive ears. "I am a stranger in these lands and seek only kindness, my lady. Comfort and shelter."

"You shall find no respite with the people of Yaham."

"You call me thief?" Maya's voice warmed with the currents of anger.

"And a thief you are. You may stand as their Queen, though the quality of your crown is naught but ash at my feet." The Sarima motioned her tribe to stand down, lay down their crude weapons, and with it turn their backs on the strangers. "Leave these lands or come the dawn you will be hunted as beasts."

"You dare to judge me, eater of flesh?"

The Sarima was the last to turn her back on Maya and her companions and that was all she needed to communicate her disdain.

Maya hissed, a reptilian sound, she bared her sharp teeth and looked over every one of the tribe of Yaham. She would return and kill them all, the Sarima knew this but the tide of fate was just so that she could not raise her hand to give the command to attack.

The Sarima carried the burden of this knowledge in silence. She grieved in silence.

*

"Why must I see this?" Alex whispered, her eyes running with tears as she felt Ea's guilt wash through her soul. Time was passing again.

"You must remember." He whispered against her throat, the hotness of his breath, the softness of his mouth made her swoon.

"Remember?"

"You must remember." He repeated as his fanged teeth scraped the surface of her skin.

*

Ea felt Honni's presence at her back and took courage.

She wore no clothes save for the wolf's pelt and hollowed skull placed atop her head like both a crown and cloak. The Prince of the Lotan bowed his head in the respect of her rank but his people fell to the floor on hands and knees, pressing their pale, clean skin into the black soil.

Their Prince was beautifully made. Hair as dark as the night sky and eyes the colour of the purple dawn. The Sarima's shoulders squared and she had to draw a slow breath to steady herself. She had not remembered his fine face and it made her swallow.

"Draconi." The Sarima smiled revealing sharp teeth. "Gracious Prince of Hunters, sons of Lotan, be welcome in Incendia."

Her voice was young, it spoke softly and authoritatively and she saw his mouth twitched as if he had not expected eloquence from a creature adorned by human and animal remains.

"Sarima." He greeted whilst gesturing for his people to rise from their genuflect.

Curious at the sight of the peoples of Lotani, for it was rare that their tribes might meet, she carefully lifted the wolf skull from her head, exposing the full of her face and the full sight of her eyes. Her gaze locked with the Prince and for an instant her vision seemed to vibrate with mystifying energy.

Draconi's people recoiled at the sight of the cannibal Queen adorned by the dirt of the earth and old blood of her prey. Draconi remained staring, a play of exquisite confusion clouded his expression until his companion cleared his throat and broke the connection between them.

She waved her hand in the air and Gesh appeared from out of the shadows. His stealth panicked the Lotani. She whispered something softly to him and he bowed deeply before slipping back into the shadows.

"You were born in the House of Stars, as was I." She said plainly taking pains to remind him of their joint rank and heritage.

He gritted his teeth. Angry. The tales of the Sarima of Yaham being born in the sacred E-mul had been so scandalous and blasphemous that Belatu - the mother of the sovereigns of the three tribes - had been executed.

She placed a hand on a Lotani head and he shrunk beneath the weight of her touch. "You will not be harmed unless you give us reason to do so. We are a people of reason, Draconi. We are connected to the ebb and tide of nature, the cycles of life, of death. These things drive us all."

"Hunger."

She smiled and a light played across her face that enchanted him, all be it momentarily.

"Hunger and the savage beauties of the hunt, the necessity of it, Prince." She stroked the Lotani man's hair absently. "The intricacies of death bind us all."

She saw his eyes cloud over with thought and knew then that he had encountered the Queen of Thieves, the once witch Maya. She turned her back to the Prince before adding. "…Even the immortal."

She could hear his labouring breath and the climbing beat of his heart.


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen:

Blood ran down Alex's throat, thick and warm running between her breasts, staining her filthy shirt. Her eyelids fluttered, her vision sharpening. Black hair tickled her cheek as his mouth fixed to the incision in her throat, his lips painted with her lifeblood.

He smelt like the wind in the night. His lids so pale, almost translucent she could see his eyes glowing beneath.

"Don't you see?" He whispered against her skin drawing feelings from the base of her gut, rolling the emotions on the current of his breath.

Her throat was raw, the wound gaping like a hole. Small sounds escaped her throat, sounds of pain, of longing, of things remembered.

"Do you remember now?"

She wanted to reply, wanted to say so many things but instead she fainted into a memory.

*

The night was fragrant with blood.

The Sarima turned her head to the spread of the valley below her. Darkness swelled and bulged in the dense tangle of forestland. She had stood for three moons on the precipice of the mountain, watching and waiting for the Prince to return.

Her people came and lay offerings of meat slavered bones at her feet. On this night, the night fragrant with blood, the moon at its zenith she watched the Prince march toward her mountain.

No truce had been made since the Prince had come into her lands last, they sat in uneasy debate of what an alliance would cost such old enemies. She knew through dreams and foresight that the Prince had a heavy burden on his young shoulders as the immortals came by night to ply his people with visions of beauty and eternal life.

Her people gathered from their dark nooks and crannies, called by a wordless instinct, ready to fight.

Gesh was kneeling by her side before the Prince and his men were bid up the mountain side, her fingers clasped in his hair to steady her nerves. There was something about the Prince, his eyes, his features, things that made a strange, unsettling feeling in her gut and bones.

The pale clean skin of the Lotani gleamed in the moonlit night. Their spears glistened to, the crude but deadly points inked in poison.

Her people parted to either side creating a path for them to approach the Sarima who stared out imperiously from her wolf's pelt mantle.

The Sarima watched enrapt as the young Prince's lip curled in disdain at the sight of the filthy, rot covered people of Yaham but his expression changed when it set upon the Sarima's face. A strange and soft kind of wonderment briefly lit his features but it was soon corrected into smooth, unreadable lines.

"What have you to say now?" She asked before he had even reached her.

Draconi looked her in the eye, his mouth pinched and unhappy. The Sarima could smell the subtle scent of the immortal, the Queen of Thieves had perfumed his body and her lip drew back over her sharp teeth ever so slightly in her own disgust.

Draconi gave the barest of nods in recognition to her crown. One of his companions stepped forward. "My Lord has come to state his decision on the matter of war." He said.

"And take the challenge?" Sarima asked.

The Lotani man blanched, his lips drawn to her blood smeared mouth, the sharp teeth beneath. "Yes, as tradition dictates."

"Good." She released Gesh's hair and he slithered into the shadows, toward the belly of the mountain. The Sarima began to follow in even stride leaving the Lotani agape at her rudeness.

"Our decision." The Lotani man shouted in a bid for her attention but she continued her path into the darkness of Incendia.

Draconi put a hand on his man's shoulder and pushed him back. He gave a meaningful look and unaccompanied he followed the Sarima into the belly of the mountain.

*

Alex was coughing, her lungs filled with smoke and sulphur. "Too much." She said between hacks. "It's too much."

The vampire's hand was cool on her forehead a moment before his free hand tangled in her hair and pulled her head back, exposing the line of her bloodied throat. "Too much?" He breathed in her ear.

*

"You accept the challenge?" Sarima's voice echoed through the cave.

They were alone the two of them, Draconi turned his head this way and that trying to catch sight of her in the dark but his eyes had not yet become accustomed like the Sarima who was a creature who lived in dark places. "I do."

A torch flared behind his head, illuminating the cave, orange light bounced against black rock, throwing kaleidoscopes over everything. He grimaced using a hand to shield his vision until he saw the Sarima standing a small distance away.

"Whomever so loses this fight, Prince will be bound to the other for eternity."

There was something in her words that made his stomach knot. He was filled with feelings that were not altogether unpleasant. Her words so familiar were ringing in his ears._ Bound to the other for eternity._

He removed his own cape of white wolf fur and laid it gently to the ground.

"Are you ready?" She asked softly.

He met her eyes and they seemed to glow as bright as the flame. He nodded his consent but he was not prepared for the first raking fist across his jaw, her sharp, dirty nails sliced into his skin and he was left rocking by a succession of small electric jolts.

She too had felt it, she cradled her hand to her chest, eyes staring at him from beneath the wolf skull as if he had performed something miraculous.

"You use your Master's strength against me?" He growled.

Her lips shivered. He reached for her and she backed away, tripping to the ground. Her mantel fell from her head, sliding off her shoulders revealing the full of her face in the torchlight. Her hair, thick dreads whipping around her face.

The Sarima did not have dragon Power but the Lotani thought the people of Yaham a terrible race full of mystic powers and debasement.

He reached for her whilst she in turn raised a hand to capture his and the world burst into a blinding light.

The Sarima's spine bowed as if in divine pain or ecstasy, her body couldn't decide which. It was as if she could see through him, into him, beyond him and she knew that he could see her too. When she could muster the strength she drew her hand back.

Beyond the caves the people of Yaham burst into a chorus of howls and grunts, mimicking wolves and boars.

The Power that had raised between them was simmering now, a chord of life that bound the Prince to the Sarima. It was thick, pulsing like black, diseased vines and it spoke of the things the Sarima had dreamed. This was the part and purpose of her being.

They both looked to the darkness as if they could lay their eyes on the choir beyond.

"I can not fight _you_." The Sarima said.

Draconi touched his cheek, flesh hanging from where she had scraped it off. He knew as the blood ran over his fingertips that he could not raise his hand to the creature on the floor. What he had seen in her mind had changed his thoughts to her.

His fascination had amplified, his hatred changing into regret.

"Come." She was already heading deeper into the mountain, using small, near invisible passages.

The breath of the mountain, the kiss of sulphur became a sickly rage eating at his skin. The Sarima moved with purpose, agile and graceful across the rocky path. She lead him without looking back.

A sound grew like the roar of some great beast. His heart thudding with growing fear as he though he were being lead to the dragon himself.

"Through here." Sarima squeezed into a small hole.

It took him more moments to follow and he stood in a cavern of dim light. In the bowel of the mountain was no great beast but a waterfall.

The fall of water thundered around them and the rocks began to tremble. He held his hands to his ears whilst the Sarima peeled the skins from her body. "Our time grows short, Prince. A decision must be made." He read the words on her lips for she could not hear her own voice as she spoke.

Using the tepid waters she began to bathe, scooping handfuls and making the dirt and blood run in trails across her skin. Nude and clean she stood as he had often thought her to be. A young girl, barely a woman, her skin deeply tanned so unlike his kinsmen. Her hair lay in tendrils, clinging to her like weed. Her eyes shone a burnished gold.

Staring, barely noticing the pain of clinging to the rocks, the breaking of his skin and oozing blood. A great roar filled the cavern and seemed to shake their very bones.

"Your decision." She urged.

He reached for her, one hand cupping her face drawing her toward him, so close he could taste her breath. He could feel her whole body quivering, uncertain, stubborn, her energy pulsating through his palm. The strange and brilliant power flared to life between them. The chord of dark vine began to take an edge of flame.

"Yes." He whispered against her lips, tongue emerging to taste the last vestige of dirt from her face. "Sarima."

"Ea." She corrected against his mouth.

"Ea. Daughter of Dragons," he said, staring deep into her eyes deep enough to see the embers.

It was an inevitability, knew it from the first whispers in the soil. All events leading to this. She cried out when he breached her. Blood running as slick as the other juices that made his path deeper inside. Two chords tightly bound. Two bodies made one in flesh.

"Lover of Draconi." She replied in the barest breath.

*

Alex woke choking, choking, struggling to suck stale air into her shrivelled lungs. Haphazardly cradled in Cal's arms, his grip was tight and hot on her cold, cold skin.

"Stop, Alex, it was just a dream. Just a dream."

When those words penetrated her muddled head she stopped trying to breath and felt her body go passive. Blood tinged tears fell down her cheeks, her mouth remained slack and unemotional. It took time for her mind to regain control of itself.

She was Alex Burrows. Alex-

"It's okay sugar."

The Sarima's story simmered beneath her flesh. The feel of him pressed on top of her, pale skinned Prince… Cal was beside her stroking her hair and she almost forgot that he was not the same as he was before.

She tried to move out of his grasp but she was sluggish, her veins burning, her skin stretched too tight over her bones. Cal held her close, his breath cold by her ear. "You were just dreaming, yes?"

She turned her head away. "Why don't you just get it over with?"

He grasped her chin and forced her to look into his face. His eyes were yellow where once they were green. "You wish it were that easy."

Her head sagged from exhaustion.

"You know who I am?"

She nodded sullenly. She had always known. Deceiver. Demon. He was Nergal. Cal Radford was just another person to mourn.

She felt battered, eaten away by the hot breath of the vampire and hard scrape of his fangs and now the cold embrace of the demon and his insidious whispers.

"I wish I knew what was going on in that pretty little head." Nergal confessed.

"You didn't have to take him. Why did you?" She whispered without turning to look at him.

"I love to take what's yours, don't you know that by now?" He chuckled. "I have waited so long."

"To kill me?"

He chuckled again.

Waited. Waited lifetimes. Her heart was swollen and tender from her memories. The Sarima's memories. The feel of the prince on top of her, the poisonous breath of the mountain forced down her throat, the dreadful roar of the falling water washing away the dirt, the blood, her good sense.

The demon's voice was cold filled with the echoes of many voices, many of the humans he had inhabited. "I have come up from beneath to be with you."

"Me?"

"You will give me what I want Agrat-bat-mahlat."

The name sent her body in spasms of terror, her body dissolved into trembling that overcame the memory of the Sarima. Her own voices rose in a chorus, riddling through her skull, ascending at the syllables of that name.

"What did you call me?" She asked as her mind crowded with a wild shrieking.

Nergal merely made Cal's lips curve in a smile.

"I want my friend back." She said very calmly but there was an echo of another voice thickening her words and the smile fell from Cal's lips and a light came up in his eyes.

"Just like you want your father?"

"My father is dead."

"I know. Wonderful, isn't it?"

"Before our time is through, I will get him back."

"Oh Alex, is that a threat?"

She shook her head, feeling weak, impotent but there was one thing she knew. Her words were a promise.


	18. Chapter 17

_Thanks for leaving a comment, airaseem p.s. I know how messy this story seems but I hope I can tie it all together by the end *fingers crossed*_

**Chapter Seventeen:**

The lights flickered on. In an instant every dark corner of the room was flooded in stark white light. Alex flinched, using her arms to cover her eyes against the light that seared her retinas and made her nauseous.

The door opened. Belinda Short strode in and nudged Alex with the toe of her boot. Her nose wrinkled in distaste at the stench of her unclean captive, and Alex replied with a gutteral noise, her arm still raised to squint against the light. "Get up. Goddess damned creatures of the night."

Alex didn't move.

"I'm running out of time and space." She snapped.

Alex didn't attempt to speak, she could barely listen to the witch ramble. Belinda was not happy to be in the city, this much was clear but bound by promises she had been moved into San Francisco.

When Belinda had finished she left Alex alone. Alex She curled into a foetal ball and let the tears warm her cheeks whilst she shivered, slowly feeling her body quit on her. Then the whispering began, as it always started with the seductive whispers and those whispers turned to cacophonies. Deafening, blinding, robbing her of her will to move, her will to think.

She felt an invisible warmth of a mouth on her skin. She tried to cling to the feeling of irresistible heat and the memories of exquisite pleasure and the undercurrents of pain and the forbidden.

She was soon lost in a vision…

*

The woman Honni stood tall, striding passionately from one end of the small cave to the other. "The Sons of Lotan have made their choice." She said through her teeth.

"Honni, no." The Sarima said protesting yet again in defence of the Prince and his people.

Honni made a sound low in her old throat. "Child, please."

The Sarima struck the woman about the face. "Do no forget who is Sarima here."

Honni fell to her knees before her queen, laying her head to the Sarima's feet and whispering, "Forgive me."

"You did not bear witness to the oaths spoken in the belly of Incendia." She put a hand to the wolf's skull at her head, the other settling on her swollen stomach. "This thing you speak of can not be."

"The Immortal whispers even now, my child." Honni approached her slowly, standing behind her, hard fingertips finding Sarima's back, gently kneading the tension from the girl's flesh. "They spread their lies and infect the hearts of the Lotani."

The Sarima closed her eyes and she thought of the last time she had seen the Prince, he had seen her beneath the layers of mountain grime and his expression had been one of wonder. They lay together upon the hard surface of the rocks and before he left he had laid a kiss upon her brow.

When she opened her eyes she was staring into the darkness of the cave, Honni's presence warm at her back.

"Please, my beloved." Honni whispered behind her ear. "We have no allies save ourselves. The Lotan are weak, they are not of our blood-"

"This child is of Lotan." The Sarima hissed.

"He is your blood, our blood, he is of Yam Nahar and no other." Honni said hands now kneading Sarima's shoulders to soothe and persuade.

There was a clamour at the mouth of the chamber and Honni rushed forward to see. The Sarima waited with mock patience until two tribesman carrying another staggered in and lay the body before her.

Honni stood at the mouth of the cave, her dark eyes shining the in the dim light of the torches. "You see, Sarima?" Her voice was hoarse.

Sarima took one step forward to see Gesh's' butchered body. His throat had been crudely slashed as if by teeth or tiny spear points, his chest had been punctured as if by powerful fists. A high pitched wail erupted from the gathered and then another and another until an awful chorus rose together in intense keening.

"Murdered by Lotani hands, Sarima." One of her kneeling men murmured though she could barely hear over the screams of her people who had gathered to witness their fallen kin.

Sarima staggered slightly and sat, as the child inside her kicked hard against her insides as if seeking the sight of the dead. Betrayal rocked her body in icy jets and she felt the phantom of Draconi's kiss, each and every touch that had been a lie.

"Honni," she cried. "Honni?"

The old woman came to her, struggling through the dense crowd. The Sarima rubbed her swollen belly as if to calm the child but anger had possessed her and taken the child too like a vile curse. A scion of Yam-nahar to the marrow.

Time moved quickly, maybe days, maybe even weeks and Alex saw the Sarima standing on the precipice of the great mountain, the full number of her tribe gathered below her, looking up at her silhouetted against the inky darkness. The wolf's skull sat heavy upon her brow but to her people she radiated like a goddess.

"We who descend from the Great Dragon have reason to be proud."

A cheer rang from some of the gathered below. The Sarima felt an acute sense of grief but smothered it with thoughts of revenge and the taste of Gesh's body still inside her mouth.

"Go forth and hunt." She declared. "Take the skin of the wolf and the tusk of the boar. Become the fiercest of beasts. We will give the purple eyed Prince a reasons to fear our lands."

Incendia howled in jubilation. A savage chorus of the tribe that seemed to rock the earth beneath them and the Sarima smiled. No one could see the sadness in her eyes, the undercurrent of it in her every expression.

She pushed back the wolf skull from her face before speaking again."The Mother lay with the Dragon and brought forth our first King and mightiest of generals. Their blood flows through us. Yam-nahar's blood runs through us. Let us then make the blood of our enemies flow like the rivers of fire. Let us make a feast for the Dragon." The baby began to kick and she had to force herself to remain straight backed.

She watched with gritted teeth as her people moved like shadows, slithering through the dense forest land beyond the mountain in search for the blood of the Lotani.

Alex almost choked at the foul taste of human flesh at the back of her throat, repulsed in the knowledge that the tribe had eaten the remains of Gesh, but even as she thought it time was moving again and she was enveloped in dim light.

In the depths of the mountain, the Sarima was laid upon a rock as Honni washed her clean with cool water, she dipped her fingers in mud and drew sigils upon the Sarima's swollen belly, her forehead and her thighs.

Sarima felt the waters flow from between her legs and Honni began to chant beneath her breath, sending prayers to Yam Nahar. Two or three other woman had stayed for the birth, each painted with sigils, bearing torches and chanting melodically.

"The child is coming." The Sarima whispered though a unique pain such as she had never felt wracked her body. The blood of birthing would anoint the earth in offering.

Time passed for the Sarima in a daze and eventually the baby was delivered, Honni holding up the child to the torchlight, blood and viscera staining it. A great cry came from the child and a breath of relief escaped the gathered. Sarima collapsed in exhaustion and uttered a prayer and other gratitude to gods, goddesses, to the Dark Mother and Yam-nahar…

*

Draconi bled forth from the darkest of shadows, immaculately dressed in a three piece suit, hair as dark as a raven's wing perfectly style and eyes an electric purple flashing dangerously in the dark. Cal Radford felt the vampire's encroaching Power march along his skin like the sharp footfalls of insects.

They both stood in the cell that held Alex Burrows captive, standing over her whilst she shivered in a pungent heap on the floor.

"What have you done to her?" Cal asked in a whisper.

Alex's head was thrown back leaving her virgin throat utterly exposed. Her eyelashes fluttered wildly as if she were dreaming. Draconi knelt down to slide his fingers into her hair, cupping her scalp, he lifted her face to suck on her bottom lip. She did not react.

"No." Cal hissed.

"She's mine again and now." Draconi laughed.

"She will never be yours." Cal snarled. "She is more than you would ever know, beyond this earth that you cling to with your tenuous immortality."

Draconi put Alex back to the ground and a small grunt escaped her.

"Why are you interfering?" Cal's voice was suddenly deep, demonic, something rippled and move just behind his eyes.

Draconi stood before he spoke. "She can be in this world and I will not interfere, but it is hell that can not hold her."

Cal hissed, reptilian and cold , his teeth suddenly becoming sharp and grotesquely inhuman. "You will pay vampire."

Draconi took hold of the front of Cal's shirt and pushed him hard against the nearest wall. "You will not have her in this life, demon." He growled.

"And what about the next?" It was then Nergal realised the vampire was trading blood with the girl to help bring on a gradual death, to have her fade from life as a ghoul, a brainless creature beyond demon grasp. Nergal laughed through Cal's throat before erupting into a fit of coughs.

_The next may never come. _Draconi thought silently and released the witch to simply disappear from sight.

*

Alex came to with the echo of Ea's screams riding her skull.

There was a bloody stain on the floor where Alex lay and Cal was sitting in the opposite corner watching her. She forced herself to sit up but even this small movement made her hurt. She tried to remain calm, ignoring Cal sitting and staring from across the room._ You're not Cal. _She thought.

A yawning silence filled the space between them.

"You're pregnant." He said suddenly.

She closed her eyes and felt her chest convulse with soul weary ache. She thought of Cal's child, the Sarima's child, her child. "It was Cal's child." She whispered.

"Our child, Alex." He corrected.

She looked at him then and his face was deceptively Cal's. How long had he been wearing that face, she wondered. The demon she had been looking for could have been with her all along. "You knew?" She whispered.

"The Clinic called the night you left." He was shaking with barely restrained rage as if he were nothing more than human. "You should have told me."

She clamped her lips together in a thin line, refusing to say the words dancing on the tip of her tongue, _I was afraid. _

"You should have told me."

"What does it matter now?" It wasn't even Cal she was talking to. She turned her face away from him to the blood stain on the floor. Her eyes filled with useless tears that she couldn't stop.

He slammed his fist on the wall and the sound was thunderous to her sensitive ears. "You're carrying our child. Of course I had the right to know, Alex."

"Oh God," she pressed her forehead to the cool ground and a sob wracked her body. "Oh God, God."

Cal tentatively moved toward her, put his arms about her, drew her toward him and she couldn't resist. She wanted to believe for an instant that everything was okay.

In a swift movement, like a serpent she rose, one hand on his chin, the other trapping his wrist. "I can smell your blood, taste your heartbeat, I can hear the waste moving through you. This virus ate the life inside of me, I could smell the blood of the foetus, and I dipped my hand into that miracle of life and sucked my fingers dry. The child is dead."

Horror twisted his expression, mouth working in o's of disbelief and she could almost believe he was Cal until the strange, alien entity moved behind his eyes, undulating beneath the flesh of his face.

"What have you done?" He asked softly.

She dropped him and staggered backward until her back hit a wall. The beat of Cal's blood seemed to follow her relentlessly, her face gathered heat from it and she didn't understand what was happening. She was changing, she could feel it as her human parts failed her. She was no longer pregnant, the vampire's embraces had bled her of that and each time he touched her he robbed her of her humanity, robbed her of her life.

"Tell me what I am, Draconi." She whispered but no reply came instead the voices rose in her mind and they were so very angry.


	19. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen:**

They had prepared for a war but the Sarima knew before she stood to make her final speech that the tribe of Yaham was not long for this world. The Dragon's breath grew hot as the many moons passed, the bowels of the mountain were throbbing and evermore angry . She knew the signs. She had dreamed about this for a long time.

With daggers carved from bones her people slithered through the semi-darkness, a scourge through the tangled wild lands of their home.

She watched the Lotani, as pale as the Immortals shine through the trees, she watched bright blood burst against the soil as Yaham cut down Lotan and Lotan cut down Yaham.

The Sarima's heart was heavy as she slowly descended the mountainside and placed her feet on the earth. She walked with the bone dagger, the weapon of the monarchs of Yaham clutched in one hand and the other hanging limply by her side. She walked alone for all of her tribesman had rushed forward to fight.

She moved like a spectre through the semi-darkness until she passed between two trees to find Draconi, Prince of the Lotani standing by the side of Maya. What a pretty couple they made. Her whole being seemed to sag, resigned, sinking into the betrayal.

Maya's smile was razor sharp and the glow of victory lit her many coloured eyes as they caught sight of the queen.

The breath of cold magic whipped at the Sarima's cheeks and she pulled off her wolf mantle and shook out her dirty hair. She was speared by the eyes of her lover and she noticed the change in him. His skin was more than its usual paleness, it was translucent, the network of his veins shining underneath. His eyes glowed, radiating energies that had not been there before.

She let the dagger fall from her hand to the earth, her arms slowly rising as if to embrace the onslaught of blood drinkers who sprang from the dark and seized her, their cold fingers cruel on her skin. Draconi watched in perfect and unnatural stillness.

The Sarima's mind disappeared within itself to dull the pain of what came next, her mind and heart were with the fire mountain and the hot breath reaching toward the heavens, it's bile bubbling ready to rain down on the valley.

Through the haze of the Sarima's thoughts she spoke one last time and to her lover alone. "I am the goddess, Draconi."

*

"I never understood what you meant then." The vampire Draconi murmured against Alex Burrows ear, his words were like the caress of fingertips on her most sensitive parts. "I have waited too long, Sarima. The intricacies of death bind us all, most certainly us immortals."

Alex struggled to inhale, she felt as if she were choking, her throat closed unable to accept anything into her body. The vampire beside her laughed, tangled as he was with her, holding her like a new born.

It was excruciating, it felt as if her skin was being peeled back from her bones, her veins were inflating with too much blood, her heart imploding, exploding, shrivelling simultaneously.

"You don't need to breath." He whispered.

On his word she went perfectly still. She had tried so hard not to become fodder for the Night World. She was nineteen, on the cusp of her twentieth birthday but that would never come now. Tears spilt on her cheeks and they were as red as blood.

"Do you think we are even now?" He asked cryptically.

At the sound of those words her mind burst into a cacophony of riotous screams. Those voices that had been so real when she was human were amplified through her vampiric being, her very skin vibrated with power they possessed. She knew then as she had never known before the voices were her own.

She could hear the Sarima dark and dangerous and warning her not to trust the vampire before her, but Alex Burrows was vampire too.

The voices raged and Alex began to feel heat radiate in the molecules around her, the edges of the world were blurred by flame. It seemed they would rise to a crescendo and she was suddenly standing, infused by Power, and Draconi was flung to the other side of the cell like a rag doll.

She lifted a hand toward the door and it came off its hinges as if a small explosion had opened it and she walked as if she were possessed. She suddenly had a clarity of mind that she had not had since the first whisper of the voices.

The lingering sorrow of the Sarima's life seemed to melt away and she was filled with new purpose if only for a moment. It was as if she did not have control of her limbs but some outside force directing her through Belinda Short's labyrinth of the cellar prison.

"Cal." She breathed.

He was standing with his back to her, engaged in animated conversation with a non descript vampire. Alex made a motion with her hand and the vampire was flung to one side just as the door had moved at her will.

Cal turned, but what she saw with her new eyes was not Cal at all. How could she have ever been deceived. The shadow of Nergal's true face sat heavy on Cal's skin. It's tongue sharp and black and thrusting, dripping poison as it lashed. Nergal smiled and Alex could see its teeth as craggy and dark as black rock but his eyes were worst of all. Black like pools reflecting the flames of hell itself.

The demon laughed and it was a chorus of terrible shrieks that would make any lesser being cringe. "I knew you'd come."

"Cal." She whispered and the surface of his skin rippled with unease.

A terrible gurgling noise escaped his mouth and Nergal was uncertain on his feet.

"Cal." She called him but it was more than speaking his name, it was as if the Power that infused her was drawing Cal Radford out from the depths where he hid by a thin cord.

"No." Nergal growled and gurgled.

"Yes." Alex hissed.

It was a metaphysical tug of war, but whilst Nergal used large and nasty claws at his end of the razor thin cord, Alex had the hands of her former selves. They stood, two figures metres apart, staring at one another.

Nergal continued to ripple over Cal's skin, every inch Alex pulled the darker the shadow became gathering above Cal's head.

"Give him back." She said softly almost not said at all and a great and terrible swelling of heat rocked the cord and a terrible cry was torn from Cal's throat. White hot and blinding even Alex was knocked a step backward.

Cal had fallen to his knees, trembling, blond hair covering his face as he gasped for another breath of air.

"Cal?" She whispered.

His head rose slowly, too slow, Alex throat was tight with anticipation.

"Darlin?" His eyes met hers and his lips were shivering.

She ran to him, gathering him to her whispering against his damp hair. "Be calm, Calm."

They rocked together for some moments and she continued to whisper all the while whilst he shook in her solid embrace. "I am the goddess, Cal, I am the womb."

She exposed his throat and with tenderness she sank her sharp teeth into his clammy skin. She luxuriated in breaking the skin, in puncturing his flesh and the blossoming of blood gathering in the cavern of her mouth. A rich, deeply rich nectar filled with the complexity of the person.

He didn't fight, finding only comfort in her arms, the gentle sound of her voice illuminating his mind. Calm. Warm.

When she had taken more than her fill she pulled back, blood bright and warm over her jaw, anointing the tip of her nose. She was ignorant of the procedure to bring about the rebirth and rashly tore at the skin of her wrist forcing it to Cal's mouth, tipping his head just so to drink her blood and ingest her life. "I am the goddess, Cal, you will be reborn through my blood."

She felt as if she were wading through a thick fog, the sting of Cal sucking from her wrist a distant anchor to the world until she heard people marching toward them. She pushed Cal away and he was collapsed on the floor, wallowing in a high he had never felt before.

Alex pushed herself to her feet just as the retinue appeared around the corner lead by the diminutive witch, Belinda Short.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Belinda asks imperiously.

Alex held up a bloodied hand, only slightly trembling and the hot Power rushed from her palm and knocked the witch off her feet. "I am vengeance. " She whispered ever so softly.

When the men gathered around Short they found her throat split in two, she was convulsing, reflexively gagging, mouth working in silent prayers to the gods and goddesses she had forsaken. With vampiric strength Alex lifted Cal as if he were a doll and she carried him out.

*

Alex Burrows dipped Cal Radford's unconscious body into the icy bathwater as if it were his first baptism, the ice cubes rattling against the sides of the tub. Cal's body was burning, turning the cubes to liquid almost instantly and the cold to searing hot. "I don't know what to do." She confessed but Cal did not reply.

He floated in the water, at times he went into spasms, thrashing. She was collapsed beside the tub with her forehead pressed to the rim at a loss. What could she do?

Cal was dying or worse. She had no knowledge of the mechanisms of the dark rebirth, she had fed and had given her blood in return but it was not enough. Cleary not enough. "I'm sorry." She whispered.

She sat like that for hours as day turned to night. Eventually she pulled herself up to look in the mirror, using fingertips to prod at the corners of her eyes. They were incredibly vivid now and she thought she saw a spark, orange, like lava, gold like…like the Sarima or something else. The whispers began, subtle and irresistible.

She fell to the ground, her head smacked the edge of the sink, the porcelain cracked her blood spilt across the tiles.

Night passed to day and back again whilst Alex lay as helpless as a newborn

Until suddenly she woke as if from a terrible nightmare. She sat up feeling instantly dizzy and something else… Hungry. It was no ordinary hunger she felt, this hunger seemed to radiate through her very bones and her gums were raw. Her whole body trembled, she felt like an addict wanting a fix. The rattle of death was working through her body but the beat of life was throbbing nearby.

Her eyes rolled to the body in the bathtub. Cal Radford floating, unconscious in a bath of murky water. Useless breath rattled out of her shrivelling lungs and red tears burst from her eyes.

She whimpered as she approached him and closed her eyes as she sank her teeth into his flesh.


	20. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen:

Alex Burrows stepped into The French Laundry some time before sundown, clothed in a Chanel suit with hopes to impress and deceive. She had soon found that being free on the outside world was no freedom at all, not with Pope hanging heavy like a noose about her neck.

She had not been found by Belinda Short's people and her maker was no where to be seen. She was still shaken from the knowledge he had imparted but Alex could not simply shrivel into nothing and hope to die.

She walked past the creature in the doorway. Sarosha's hands were twice the size of a normal man, his knuckles rough and red raw. He growled at her in his strange language but stranger still was that in her new state, his mumbling stirred memories, the guttural staccato began to make prefect sense.

That Sarosha didn't trust Alex went without saying. There was no other in Pope's life that openly reviled him and no other that Pope rewarded for it.

The human diners were faceless and unimportant, she could barely bring herself to notice them as she took a seat at Pope's favourite table. The last time she was here she was human and completely under Pope's control, she sat now knowing that things would never be the same again.

She was calmly sipping on her still water, ice cubes caressing her lips when Pope slid into the chair in front of her. His expensive suit smelt new, she could almost taste the leather of his shoes just as she could see the particles of fragrance clinging to his throat but it could not disguise the stench of rot and singe of his insides. "Hello, Alexandra."

She didn't offer a smile.

He stared at her trying not to appear as exasperated as he sound when he said, "you've not been answering my messages, nor banking your allowance, no one has seen hide nor hair of you for months."

She smiled then and watched as his fingertips drummed and danced across the table top. He flagged the waiter for a glass of Romanée Conti. He returned to her with a bright, utterly false smile. "We've been most concerned about our favourite daughter."

Her birthday had passed, he would have marked this but then her birthdays had rarely been celebrated.

"You've changed." He marked but could hear the question in his voice. Couldn't quite figure out what had changed in her though he studied her face, failing to meet her eyes directly.

"Things have turned considerably sour in San Francisco, don't you think?" He sipped his drink.

"I'm surviving fairly well."

"Without money?"

"I have friends in the city."

"Like your friends in Lahore and Stockholm? Do I know these...friends?"

She smiled. "I thought you knew it all, Pope."

He laughed and leant back into his chair, one arm laying at across the back where he studied the light playing off the surface of his wine glass.

"We're playing a new game now." She said with another smile, the keen edge of danger on her lip. "I am ceasing all contracts between us, I no longer require your money, your protection, nor your prying eyes. I wish to sever all ties after the business of Nergal is concluded."

"Oh?" He was thoroughly amused. "Alex, you forget who you're talking to."

She shook her head, no.

His mood suddenly darkened. "You will die miserably without me, Alexandra."

Her eyes flashed, the voices raising in a gentle chorus as if they could warn Pope himself to be careful of her. "You can try and have me silenced but I wouldn't recommend it. I'm done with you, Pope."

He threw back his head and laughed. "You are preposterous, child."

Her expression was unrelenting and he placed his glass on the table with a pronounced thud. "You can not dictate the terms of our relationship. No one can breach their contract. I made you, Alexandra. I sustain you. I. Own. You."

There was hellfire in his voice, a peek of sharp teeth, a vision of the real Pope rippling passed his human façade. The patrons began to turn their heads, revealing their disapproval at the slowly raising pitch of his voice.

They both settled down for a quiet few moments, Pope ordered for them both as the waiter approached them, Alex's focus was channelled on leaving the restaurant alive.

"There was an inquest into Gideon Parasyn's death." He said conversationally.

She raised an eyebrow. The last time she had seen Parasyn was in a crumpled heap on a factory floor, bleeding from the bullets she had fired from her own gun.

"They won't find anything of course I believe the authorities have deemed his death a suicide. He'll be buried at Trinity Church within the week and Marie would like you to attend." She was surprised Marie Parasyn had remembered her at all.

"I regret that I have to decline the invitation." She murmured.

His hand curled into a fist.

"Where have you been Alexandra?" He asked, his voice dangerously soft.

"I must be going now." She said standing, his eyes alert to her every movement.

"You will come again." He said between his teeth.

"It's been a pleasure." She said and left the restaurant.

*

Alex walked miles, taken trams and hid in awnings to try and lose the scent of Pope and his people. She got home a little after daybreak, seated herself on Cal's sofa and listening to Cal's laboured breathing through the door that separate them.

Whilst the reality of having walked away from Pope, her benefactor, her protector was dawning on her she felt the irresistible rise of the Hunger.

Her grip tightened on the arm rest, nails piercing the leather. She closed her eyes but all she could imagine was Cal's body wrapped in layers of sheets, shivering, lips trembling as he was slowly dying.

She soon fell into an uneasy sleep.

Her mind turned to Draconi almost instantly, his blood still pumping through her. She was a ombination of hurt, hate, lust and longing and all her thoughts were turned to him.

She exhaled slowly as the invisible caress drifted from her torso to her thighs. Strange, cold and alien a red tear squeezed out of the corner of her eyes. "Nergal," she whispered.

She opened her eyes but there was no one visible to her eye. "I knew you'd come back eventually." She whispered. She just didn't know how or when.

Nergal was no more than a feeling, ice cold and inspiring panic though she sat as cold and immovable as a statute.

"Your friend's face was not all that I had hoped." He confessed in a voice that was all whispers and venom.

She grew angry but still did not move.

"Our child." He sighed. "It would have been a perfect marriage."

So the knowledge hit her and she discovered it was Nergal all along, each kiss, each hit, each and every intimate moment she had shared with Cal was all a trick. Every sick and sorry memory had always been Nergal.

"How did you do it?" She asked aloud. "How did you get Cal?"

"Oh I had a little help." He pushed an image in her mind and she saw Kam standing in the Lao's kitchen, Kam locked in intense concentration commanding the snake who was raised on its belly it's tongue flicking hypnotically.

Nergal was lifted from the snake, a great amorphous thing. The shadow rushed toward Cal, it almost seemed too large to fit, it invaded every orifice of Cal's unconscious body and his body twisted as in terrible pain. He let out a long, large exhale of breath and Nergal nestled into the insides of his flesh and carefully concealed his mind behind layers of shadow.

Alex came out of the vision with a jolt.

Nergal was already talking. "You are vampire now. Dead. Your soul more hidden than ever it can be. But your mind has expanded far beyond your imagining and now I need not wear a false face to feel you, to see you, to taste you."

Invisible cold fingers slithered up her thighs again, seizing her arms.

"What do you want?" She whispered.

"What I've always wanted."

She shivered as he moved about her in an icy breeze, bringing goose bumps to her skin.

She stood suddenly and the icy feeling had dispersed. "How was it that I could drive you out of him with nothing more than my will?"

He laughed but it was a strange rattle inside her very marrow and then in a cruel chorus of voices he spoke. "I can not defy the will of Apollyon."

"Apollyon-"

"Thou shalt return to the flame, for out of it wast thou taken: for flame thou art, and unto flame shalt thou return. There is still much to learn. I knew you in hell, Agrat-bat-mahlaht." The voice vibrated through her flesh and she recognised her name even as he spoke the syllables. "And I knew you in your first flesh, Sarima Incendia, Daughter of Dragons. Queen of Whores. Eater of Flesh."

"Lover of Draconi." She whispered and focused her Power like a narrow sword and forced it into the heart of coldness that was Nergal's presence. His laughter gave a preternatural chill to her bones.

"No mere immortal could defy the desires of the Fallen." He said and evaporated.

Alex was alone. She was left feeling cold, the words he had spoken had brought her out in shivers. She collapsed on the couch and wrapped her arms around herself.

_Agrat-bat-mahlaht. _


	21. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty:

There was a stern knock on the door, the sound vibrated through the apartment and Cal sluggishly came awake. His eyes were fever bright, his tongue sad and rotting in his mouth. He wheezed as the knocks echoed about his depleting mind.

"Are you in there?" A woman's voice shivered with anger. "Cal Radford, you son of bitch are you in there?"

"Cal, it's me, just open the door." She threw herself upon the wood. Cal could feel the heat of her body through the door, from where he was nestled on the bed, swaddled in linen that had soaked through with shit and piss. He could taste the salt on the air as she cried helpless tears, her desperation whetted his appetite and he had not eaten in a very long time.

His mind was awash with base appetites, his mind was too far gone to construct complex thought patterns such as memory, recalling a name or even speaking at all. He crawled toward the warmth he felt, using elbows to drag his dead legs across the ground.

"Cal please? It's me, Penelope."

The sheets that had swaddled him for days broke like brittle bandages and he crawled across the apartment, his breath releasing in ecstatic gasps and he was hungry for that warmth, the salt of her tears, of her very blood.

"Cal I know you're there." The girl was crying now and as she lifted her fist to pound the door one last time it opened.

She stared at it, the slit in the door releasing a fierce stench. The smell of the unclean. She covered her mouth with her hands and coughed but the smell was overpowering. She slowly walked into the apartment, eyes going wide at the sight.

Everything unkempt, things had been thrown about the place, the sofa overturned, a television in pieces. The fabric of the chairs and curtains were soaked in the brown of old putrid blood.

She heard a moaning, as if someone were trying to speak with a stump for a tongue and she ventured boldly inside to find Cal slumped against the wall, his head hanging down to his chest.

"Cal, what-" She went to him with all tenderness and concern and touched his hair, matted with blood and dirt.

He lifted his head and his eyes gleamed like jewels from within a dirty face, compelling her to silence. Like a serpent he struck, cold, efficient, chewing at her throat, her cheek, her breast, whatever and wherever he could and she didn't even scream.

*

Death. As keen and telling as any other scent in the building, Alex knew of the death before she stepped inside. She found the door open and the waft of Cal's decaying body greeted her as always but there was more horror inside.

A crumpled heap of clothes, a candy pink apron worn by a ravaged corpse that was sprawled across Cal's lap like a doll.

She knelt gently beside her friend. "Cal?" She nudged him.

He exploded into action, gnashing teeth and clawing fingers reaching for her as if he were going to tear her apart. She held him back easily, she was vampire with the blood of an old one running through her veins and he was no real threat.

"Look what I've done to you." She whispered from the receding part of her that was Alex Burrows. The last part of her mortal coil the recoiled at the sight of the waitress dissolved into blood bone and viscera smeared against her apartment floor.

He responded with a reptilian hiss, blood shot eyes flashing and insane. It would not be long before his eyes would shrivel to raisins and this brought the last bloody tear from her eye.

With a shriek she sunk her hand into his chest, held his heart in her hand and squeezed until a terrible breath rattled through his deteriorating carcass and Cal was finally dead.

*

She walked and took view of the vast expanse of sky. Stars, infinite balls of blistering gas radiant in the light of the sun. They sung to her in an ancient tune that she remembered from another lifetime perhaps even another world.

She had witnessed them when the earth was newly formed. _Agrat-bat-mahlaht_. She sighed. Agrat-bat-mahlaht the demoness of prostitution and bride of hell, the lover of Apollyon himself. The devil himself. She knew this name well and knew it well enough to know that she was once Agrat, beloved of hell itself.

She could recall in startling and unbidden moments Apollyon's fierce heat and rage and light, the Prince of Hell and her creator. He had woven Agrat from the flames of hell and she remembered the rage that radiated through the fabric of her being, sustained by the devil, worshipped by the devil.

She looked down at her hands now and they trembled. She could not understand how it had come to this and even at the thought the voices rose in a gentle stream of unease.

"If this is true then I am cursed twice over." She whispered to them aloud.

Her hands were sticky with black blood…with Cal and Penelope's blood. She had only wanted to protect Cal from herself. She felt the vague sense of disgust at the dreamy way she had sliced into their flesh, through their bones, making small neat parcels of meat.

She whispered forgotten prayers to forgotten gods as she released each parcel to the gentle sway of the bay. Dark waters swallowing dark deeds. "Good bye, friend." She whispered.

She did not know what it was to be a vampire but memories of her former selves rose and fell in her mind. Over the time that had passed since she had been freed from capture the steady stream of voice instructed her of what she used to be.

But deep and dark in her soul, the embers of Agrat-bat-mahlaht lay, not ready to reveal the reason why she existed, how she had come to be made flesh and be reborn again and again. The name resounded through her mind like a heart beat.

To escape hell. _Agrat-bat-mahlaht_. She closed her eyes as if to shut the seductive whisper of the demoness in her head but it only served to make the voice stronger. _Agrat-bat-mahlaht_. Before the taste of flesh, the conception of Ea in the E-mul she had been a being of dark and terrible power.

She didn't understand why she was remembering now but she knew Nergal had intended this for her all along. The notes, the artifacts, the knowledge, the possession of her human father. Her father…a face she was fast forgetting, something she was caring less and less for.

She had barely known him and yet her mortal heart clung to notions of love and loyalty and blood. _Agrat-bat-mahlaht._ Had the Bride had a father? Had the Sarima had a father? How many fathers had she lost in the lifetimes she had lived? Lifetimes that still remained a mystery.

Draconi knew. He had buried knives and teeth into her mortal hearts. Finding her anew and he had killed her again and again but not always, not always…Now he was her father. Perhaps he would kill her a final time and there would be no coming back.

Even as she thought it he appeared, standing so still even though the winds clawed at them both, his long jacket flapping like a cape, his hair mussed around his head, falling into his eyes.

"Draconi." She sighed, the sound of his name on her lips sustaining the weight of her sorrow. She knew he could not stay away from her forever.

"So you have returned to me." He murmured. "Despite the mask your soul shines brighter than you know."

There was silence as they took time to stare and study each other.

"You relieved me of my mortality, Draconi, restored me to my former selves."

He was snared by her eyes that suddenly became, dark, deep, unfathomable pits of oozing, toxic visions. Visions of hell and earth invaded his mind and his arms trembled. Spirits from heaven and hell buzzed about her lips as she whispered languages even beyond his understanding.

When the upsurge of Power had subsided he approached her slowly. "So it is done and your soul, older than the earth, has found flesh forever more."

When he was close enough she reached out and grasped his wrist, fabric clenched between her hand and his skin. She spoke in the voice of a child. "I have nothing left. You don't know what you've done."

He stroked her cheek with his knuckles as her eyes leaked trails of blood. "You will see what I have seen, known what I have known."

He pressed his mouth to hers and she fainted into his memories.


	22. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty One:**

Alex was swimming in Draconi's memories, feeling and seeing all that he had felt and seen and it was important that she see it and she did not resist.

*

The Lotani had always been proud and fierce, they lived beyond the wild forest of Incendia, on the plains of Viridis. They were a race of hunters and there were none prouder nor fiercer than their Prince, Draconi, the ninth ruler of Lotan and child of honoured mother of Kings, Belatu.

The serpent Lotan, whom all Lotani were descended was a powerful creature who was both man and primordial beast who dwelled in secrecy in the vast seas beyond Viridis. All the authority and blessings of Lotan lay on the Prince's shoulders.

Draconi stood tall and sturdy, agile and handsome which as expected of the sons of Lotan. His fierce purple eyes marked his sovereignty. He ruled over the flat lands, and river Ager that ran through the borders of the flesh eating tribe of Yaham into the seas that housed the great father.

It was a night like many others and Draconi sat naked before a great fire, the light flickered across his face, making his eyes dance.

He beckoned for Doran to approach with a nod of his head and the messenger approached with his eyes turned to the dirt. "The Sarima of the fire mountain Incendia has sent her creature to seek audience with you, Prince."

Beside him his faithful companion, Durga sat and made a soft noise of protest.

Draconi considered his friend who crouched by his knee. Durga was old, battle worn, scarred by the long standing discontent between the tribes of Yaham and Lotani. Draconi was a young man still, he had not yet met his nineteenth winter since he was born in the House of Stars, the E-mul. He knew the stories of Yaham, like nightmares they scoured their wild land and mountain of fire, they feasted on the dead and communed with secret, unnamed magics.

The slithers of the Sarima's birth had begun thirteen years ago when a great treason had rocked the E-mul, Belatu who had born Draconi himself, had bore a girl-child, conceived of rape and ruin. Upon the child's birth the Belatu was executed and a new woman of the tribe of Cothi had been initiated into the E-mul to carry the sovereigns of all three tribes.

The Sarima had killed the honoured Belatu, his mother. This hatred had always lay between them.

"Durga." Draconi lifted a hand and Durga looked up. "The man has shed no blood, he comes in peace to seek audience with me."

"He stinks of rot." Durga spat. "But it is a rare thing for him to be separated from his queen."

"Let him come."

It was the Sarima's man, marked by the boar tusk hanging about his throat. His skin was lathered in a layer of soot making him darker than he was, his hair was thick with dirt but his eyes were bright in his dark face and they set upon Draconi instantly and without deference. "Why have you come?"

"The Sarima dreams, Sarim." He addressed Draconi with the ancient title of King, Draconi did not speak to correct him. "She dreamt of the Great Dragon flying, giving shade to the serpent. Together they feasted on the darkness and were sheltered and blessed in the valley of Incendia."

The Yaham worshipped and protected their Great Dragon, Yam-Nahar who slept in the belly of the fire mountain. Yam-Nahar was once an ally of Lotan, until the birth of the three tribes. She considered his words, the great dragon Yam Nahar and the serpent Lotan but as to the darkness he did not know who or what this could be.

"She wishes to meet with you."

Durga held forth his spear as a warning to the man-creature to hold his tongue.

"She fears." Draconi lifted his chin from his fist. "I do not know of what she fears."

"And you would trust the delusions of a flesh eater?" Durga snarled.

"They say in Incendia the very soil breaths portents. Perhaps we should hear what the Sarima has to say."

*

The woman appeared with a small accompaniment. A pretty lot they appeared, all pale and calm against the icy winds that whistled through the mountains bringing with it the spicy breath of the fire mountain. The woman, their leader, stood proud and defiant, a foreigner in a new land and yet she did not balk as Draconi approached.

She rippled.

"My Lord." She did not bow or bend to the earth. Her eyes were large reflective pools, turning momentarily purple to match his own. He was instantly enchanted.

"What people are you?"

"We are the People beyond the vale, my Lord." She said and her honeyed voice was pleasing to his ear, her seductive smile stirred his loins. "We are allies to those that will aid us with shelter and food."

"We have both." He found himself saying besotted with the curve of her mouth. He would instantly give her anything she asked.

He could feel Durga and others, staring at him, mouth hanging open but they could not understand. The woman's eyes, her voice, everything seemed to suck him into such feelings of desire he could do nothing but relent.

"I am Maya."

Maya. Maya. The name swirled around his head like a mantra.

"I am Draconi, Prince of these people."

Her followers seemed to disperse in the crowd of Lotani and Draconi offered his hand to Maya who lay icy cold fingers on his knuckles. The touch was a shock. Her skin looked white beside his, though the Lotan were thought to be remarkably pale.

She lifted her head to the moonlight and laughed and that sound seemed to possess all the darkness around them.

*

Draconi made the journey to meet with the Sarima, his curiosity diminished but not wholly gone. He had left his guests, Maya and her people to feast and flourish amongst the Lotani. The moment he stepped out of the planes and into the rocky terrain of Incendia his senses seemed to become sharper, heightened, as if he had wandered out of a dense mist.

It was not long before the people of Yaham became visible as they slithered through the mountains.

As the small party of Lotani including Durga dutifully beside Draconi started the narrow path up the mountainside they could hear the strange butchered dialect, the ancient tongue that was forgotten to Lotan.

He cast his eyes amongst the rabble who had gathered beneath a precipice, all of them dirty, mud-stained, blood painted flesh. They hissed between the insidious gasp of conversation but he walked with his head held high, expression cold like the Prince he was.

The messenger of Yaham was there to guide him inside the mountain. Durga muttered his discontent beneath his breath but Draconi meant only to hear the Sarima and walk away. It was his duty as sovereign to know what dangers would befall his people and how best to defend against it.

His mind was cold and focused and he paid little attention to the torches coming to life as if by magic to light the path into the bowels of the mountain. They were shown into a large cave, the atmosphere overly warm, the stench cloying and uncomfortable.

He studied the Sarima as she came into the paltry light that penetrated the dais.

The ragged wolf's carcass veiled her skinny, childish body. Her face obscured by the skull of the wolf, once a ferocious creature stalking the wild lands of Incendia. He counted the teeth and bones at her neck, thirteen kings and queens of Incendia, guardians of the Great Dragon.

Everything in him revolted to see her as stained and unkempt as the rabble at the mountain base. Then he saw her eyes. He felt as if he had been struck about the head, there was a strange ringing in his ears and the colour of her iris seemed to become fluid and blossom to fill his vision. The brown of the secret earth. The mystic portentous soils that spoke of knowledge beyond his veil of understanding.

He bowed his head as was proper for a prince whilst his people fell to their knees, heads pressed to the ground.

They exchanged greetings and he found her voice and manner to be civilised though she appeared wild and young. His curiosity grew with each passing second until she spoke of their births in the E-mul and he grew angry.

He suppressed a shiver as she moved, the very vibrations of the earth, the breath of the mountain seemed to move with her. "We are a people of reason, Draconi. We are connected to the ebb and tide of nature, the cycles of life, of death."

"And hunger." He thought of the pack on hands and knees tearing and slavering at the human carcass. Then she smiled and the vision fell away and he was left trembling anew.

"Hunger and the savage beauties of the hunt, the necessity of it, Prince. The intricacies of death bind us all."

He blinked. Visions of Maya playing across his minds eye. Death. It's subtle whisper slithered in her every breath, the protean colours of her eyes, the stolen blood beating, quenching her veins.

The Sarima turned her back on him before she added. "Even the immortal."

The deceptive little child-Queen. Sarima of Incendia. Daughter of Dragons. Eater of Flesh. She throbbed with the ancient powers of the earth and the darkness in which her tribe dwelt. He knew then that she knew of Maya, the Immortal Queen. He knew and felt a small trickle of shame.

*

His cheek stung from the scratch she had made and his hand was sizzling from the strange and wonderful touch they had briefly shared only moments before he watched her slide down into the cool waters and he following cringing on impact. She turned to him for the first time and held out her small, dirty hand offering her bare skin and more contact. "Come."

The thundering drop of the water fall began to make him feel strange, his throat clogged with fear. So as not to look weak he followed the child-Queen.

"What is this?"

"One of the many mysteries of the Great Dragon." She replied. Strangely she didn't have to shout to be heard. He seemed to hear her in perfect clarity. "This is where you decide, Draconi."

The tremendous sight of gushing water against the glittering rock took his breath away. The Sarima began to bathe, scraping layers of ash and earth from her flesh to reveal someone, barely a woman. She was lovely, though not as breath taking as Maya, but there was something more solid, more enticing than he could put into words.

He was left clinging to a rock, the pressure of the grip breaking his skin and he was bleeding though he barely seemed to notice. From the corner of his eye he thought he could see it, it was a strange, ugly, dark sort of thing that spilt out of his body and as if the Sarima were tugging on it, he moved cautiously toward her.

More terrible than thundering water was the sound of a roar, greater than any animal he could fathom. The Sarima's eyes were captivating and gold, gleaming more precious than any he possessed. "A decision, Prince." She said.

He was enthralled by the girl in front of him and frightened. She did not bind him with promises as Maya did. Until that moment all thoughts of Maya had deserted him. This was his choice. The Sarima and all the mysteries of Yam-Nahar or Maya and the promise of immortality.

He reached for her, touching the silky skin of her cheek pulling her close, the water making her float like a feather into his arms. The dark energies of the earth seemed to vibrate through her bones and effect him deeply.

A chord slowly wound its way through her and into him and it was more irresistible than Maya.

"Yes." His mouth against hers. "Sarima."

"Ea." She whispered.

"Ea. Daughter of Dragons."

She trembled and cried out when he found his way inside.

Her virgin blood offered like a sacrifice upon the rocks of the sacred chambers of Yam-nahar. The water bubbled and boiled, the ebb and flow as hypnotic and in synch with the rhythm of their flesh.

"Lover of Draconi." She murmured.

*

Even as the heat of their passion cooled on his flesh he was with Maya again, collapsed against her body as she suckled at his throat, drinking his blood. The change came upon him painfully but it was a butchered memory for most of it he was unconscious.

Flashes of agony and the golden eyes of the Sarima haunting him as he woke the first night a new born vampire. The emotion hit him, harder than any fist that had found his face. He cried that night as Maya found him, crawling up from the dirt she had laid him in.

"Tis a passing thing." She crooned as she cradled him again and once again fed him from her own vein to strengthen him for what was to come.

The battle had been planned quickly, Maya was a decisive leader, knowing exactly what she wanted and how to achieve it. "It will be a victory, Draconi you will see. We have nothing to fear now you and I."

He had said nothing to her, caught between a yearning for her as both a lover and a child and a keen hatred of what he was about to do. His mind was troubled by the vision of the Sarima intense and ecstatic beneath him as they made love with the blessing of the gods.

He stayed by Maya's side, barely able to look at the bloodshed that happened either side of him. He stood in the forest and watched from a great distance, a worn out looking queen descend the mountain side. Dressed in dragon scales and holding a bone dagger as if she too would fight like her people.

He could see the lethargy in her limbs, the sadness in her eyes as if she had already forseen her doom and maybe she had. He had her eye and saw the knowledge dawn on her face as she began to remove her mantle and surrender to the blood drinkers who held her indelicately.

Her eyes ensnared him, diminishing thoughts of Maya. She had no expression as she met his gaze, he was surrounded by it, the brown of the secret earth. In the depths of her eyes he could see fire and beside him Maya laughed.

He watched the vampires strip her of her dragon scales and tear the hair from her scalp. They dragged her to the river where they scrubbed her clean until her skin was red raw. She was nude and inglorious as Maya stepped up to her. The contrast of their visage made Draconi taste bile.

"Precious Sarima." Maya sneered. "What are you but a child?"

"Your punishment will run deep, Queen of Thieves." She said to Maya who cared nothing for her words but Draconi felt the icy chill of portent in her voice. Even as they came to tear the Sarima apart, through unimaginable pain and humiliation she caught his eye as intensely as she had ever done and spoke to him alone. "I am the goddess, Draconi."

*

That night as Maya's people pulled Lotan into a revel of celebrations he lay quietly by his lover who glowered down at him.

"For what peace could ever be brought between your blood? That creature demanded tribute from you, butchered and raped your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters." She lay a hand on his shoulder, her eyes filling his vision, hypnotizing him.

"She deserved her death." Nothing more would be said of the Sarima. "Come now, love, let us lay together tonight and by the next moon we will crush my sister."

Draconi could do nothing but obey.


	23. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty One**

Alex woke up in a strange bed, cool silk sheets were twisted beneath her lightly scented with jasmine. The room was dark but she could see everything with perfect clarity. Draconi was no where to be seen.

She shivered, running hands through her hair as the sensation of Maya's cold hand pulling her up to meet her eyes, hissing at her _you have become weak._ But it was not Alex she was talking to but an experience plucked from Draconi's memories. She was saturated by them, every emotion that had run through him now run through her.

She knew Maya had abandoned him when he failed to be the vampire she had meant him to be, and slowly the queen of vampires learnt the lesson of how immortality could cruelly change a person. Though Draconi had fought beside her in the battle against her sister, Helwise he had not departed long after that bitter victory.

She didn't know if she should feel sympathy for him. She didn't know what she should feel but she knew he was as lost as she was. They were all lost in this world.

Alex was cold. She had not felt real coldness since becoming a vampire. Only the coldness of Nergal, she wrapped arms around herself and trembled.

She exhaled and watched her breath appear in smoke before her eyes. "Nergal."

A laugh thrilled through her scull. "I have watched you. I have freed you."

"No," Alex hissed. "That was not within your power."

It was not Nergal but Draconi that had freed her from a human prison. It was Draconi who had gifted her with a vampire mind to encompass the knowledge of all she had been. Alex might not have liked it but she would not credit Nergal.

She grew increasingly angry and a heat began to slice through his icy presence.

"You brought Draconi to me. You want me to remember these things. Why?"

Hissing laughter.

"But Draconi has never known me as -"

"Agrat-bat-mahlaht."

Bride of Hell. Demoness of prostitution. The fabric in herself that created the heat that could start raging fires, like in the hotel, or turn an object fearsomely hot, like the steering wheel in Kam's car. Each warming of the air had come from her, the flames that had made up Agrat-bat-mahlaht. Agrat who was Alex's true first being.

"You have much to learn." Nergal said a scoffing tinge to his ghostly voice.

"You said this before. What have I got to learn?" She stood and his coldness wrapped around her like a blanket.

She opened her mouth and a great rush of icy air invaded her mouth and expanded her lungs. She was filled with images and emotions that were almost too much to bear when he released her she fell to the ground.

She was filled with a sudden and terrible knowledge. "You're looking to rebel against the Morning Star, Apollyon himself?" Alex laughed but it was Agrat-bat-mahlaht's voice that erupted from her mouth.

The spirit stiffened, became withdrawn, sucking on the warmth from the interior. "You speak blasphemy."

"I speak of your desire, Nergal. Your desire of the flesh." This was something Agrat knew all about. "Your desire to be worshipped again, to be who you were, god of the underworld and sovereign of Kutha."

He hissed.

"Your desire to become embodied again."

A rush of icy energy swirled about her, tearing at her flesh like vicious mouths. Nergal surrounded her, moved through her, and she shivered as the ice touched her very soul.

Apollyon had punished him long ago, stripping him of all mortal bodies. It was only weak magic like Belinda Short that had embodied him thus far. She could not say what would happen when one defied the devil but she was sure Nergal did not want to find out.

"I have been searching." He confessed. "Forever searching for the being that would carry me to this human world. I have plundered souls, defiled flesh and sullied nations in this search but I have always come to find you."

"Me?"

"Agrat-bat-mahlaht."

She could not deny this, the creature Agrat-bat-mahlaht whispered in her head as surely as the Sarima did. But she was Alexandra Burrows and this thought brought her voice out in a harsh growl. "Liar."

Nergal laughed and his voice seemed to ebb, ricocheting about her skull.

"Queen of Whores. Demoness of Lust. Bride of Hell. Why did do you get to escape? Why you alone?"

She screamed at the sudden throbbing heat that began to spill out from her very core. All these things he whispered were true and she knew it to the marrow. Agrat-bat-mahlaht fought to possess her being and the fires of hell spilt from Alex's flesh, slowly singing and scorching the furniture.

Nergal altogether disappeared.

There was a gentle knock at the door.

When Alex was restored to a measure of calm she quickly gathering sheets to disguise her nudity and opened the door a slim crack. "Who are you?"

"My name is Canis, my Lady." He was clothed in a shirt, waistcoat and trousers, official enough to appear like a rich man's servant. He bowed from the waist. "I am here to serve."

She could see the imprint of Draconi's mental hand on this man. Canis' peered into the room and saw the charred bed posts and ceiling and an eyebrow rose but no words passed his lips.

"I need clothes, Canis. I need to get out of here."

He bowed and left the room in pursuit of an outfit.


	24. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty Two:**

Alex walked with her head bowed, trying not to think, trying to hold the whispers of her former selves from possessing her mind, each vying for forethought. One part of her desperately wanted to find Draconi, to be near her maker, to sooth the tension that sat inside her when he was not near.

He had left her with nothing else. Nothing.

Then there was the mystery, the mystery of Nergal wanting to become flesh, in defiance of his master.

Nergal seemed to think the only way was through Agrat. He had wanted it through Alex's child but that option had been lost when Draconi had changed her. He could not possess Alex now she was a vampire and had never tried when she had been a mortal.

Perhaps he tormented her in hopes of discovering an answer held by Agrat, now locked deep in Alex's psyche.

Then there was another mystery that Alex herself could not fathom, how did Agrat escape hell and be made flesh, why did she do it and was she truly alone in her escape? These thoughts made her shiver and she held the coat Canis had given her tight around her body as if to ward off the cold that was set deep in her bones.

She walked for hours like this, her eyes set on the concrete and tarmac.

She found herself in Mission Street, a few doors away from the vampire enterprise offices, the hub of Tasi's world. She half wondered what had become of Tasi Malavazos, wondered if the vampire were alive or dead.

The grand double doors opened and a stunning, dark haired woman stepped out. Alex stopped mid-step and was hit by an extraordinary feeling. Emotions warred within herself, whilst the voice of the Sarima battled on in her mind against Draconi's intimate memories.

As if aware of the poignant turmoil of Alex's thoughts the woman turned and met her eyes.

"Oh Maya." Alex whispered though she spoke with the voice of the Sarima.

The vampire woman hissed, flashing teeth, eyes glimmering sifting through the shades of the rainbow, diminishing the image of the beautiful modern sophisticate.

"Don't you remember me?" Alex's smile was sharp, an expression that was not her own. "Queen of Thieves?"

The air crackled with the energies of ancients. It took Maya time to sift through aeons of memories, so many faces, so much death and yet her flesh remained unchanged. A light dawned in her protean eyes and a small smile curved her overripe lips.

"Sarima." Maya threw back her head and laughed. "Your soul has truly stood the test of time. And how quaint that someone took it upon themselves to initiate you into my tribe."

Fury gripped Alex's body and the voices, her voices, began to seethe in her mind. She spoke softly, calmly. "It was not a choice I made for myself."

"So I can imagine. How are you?"

"More myself than ever I have been."

Maya laughed again. "Well it's a pity I have business to attend to in Las Vegas, I'll not be able to reminisce. Is…" She looked this way and that, but it was a search beyond her eyes, she expanded her senses slowly searching for the dark thread that was Draconi.

Alex threw back her head and laughed but a chorus of voices joined her and Maya was startled.

"I suppose not." Maya smiled to disguise her discomfort. The queen did not know what to make of Alex as she was.

Moments ticked by before a cadre of dark suited People appeared to surround Maya and ushered her toward a stretch limo that smoothly pulled to the curb. Maya spared one last glance in Alex's direction and the haunting echo of the Sarima's words from all those years ago seemed to be uttered between them, though neither woman spoke. _Your punishment will run deep, Queen of Thieves._

The vampire disappeared and Alex only needed to take a few more steps before she sensed Draconi there.

She glanced behind her shoulder with a sigh. "Your heart lay with the Betrayer, Draconi." She said and looked back at the space Maya had left. "Her heart lay with the hunt."

Unbidden images projected into her mind, she saw Draconi stood the blood of a score of witches painting his face, he stood and watched Maya's features set in a demonic mask as she revelled in the death of her sister. Witch magic was sour in the air but blood ran sweet on the ground.

She shivered at the thought of such carnage. Shivered because it both repulsed and intrigued her.

She turned to look at him and he gave her a cold look before turning to leave himself.

Alex continued walking it was pointless to chase Draconi after that. She went unprotected throughout the city, knowing little about what was going on and caring even less. It wasn't long after Draconi that she was found by some recognisable faces.

She didn't know a single name but then they were unimportant. What was important was that they belonged to Tasi.

She was escorted silently by a group of young vampires, she climbed into their car in a daze, driven to a secluded place and marched down into the basement of a dark building. She allowed herself to be held, the cold grip of the vampires anchoring her to the world, stopping her thoughts from flying to a million places.

She was left in a room, a desk sat between two chairs, she took a seat and waited.

Tasi Malavazos strode into the room, barely able to conceal her curiosity. She took a seat in the opposite chair, looking prim and proper in a mauve suit, hair held back in a chignon, mouth thick with bright red lipstick.

Tasi smile wavered and Alex could now see the chinks in her armour. The imperfections of her beauty. The weakness of her magic.

"You are one of us now." Tasi murmured contemplative. "Who had the pleasure, princess?"

Alex had almost forgotten how to speak and her voice came out hoarse and unlike herself at all. "A very old friend."

"Friend is it?" Tasi's smile slipped and a crease formed between her brows. "And your baby?"

Alex froze as a collision of memories of Cal and the bloody lump, her thighs slick with blood, her fingers sticky with blood, her mouth filled with blood. She shook her head to dispel the images. "Dead."

"A pity." She spread her hands, nails painted vermillion. "I heard you were found loitering in our territory, a vampire they said, a lone woman. How can I help you, Alexandra?"

She thought of Maya striding out of the Von Seggern Malavazos Enterprise building, could imagine the cogs of the Night World politics as Malavazos lost her seat of power and Von Seggern forged alliances with the Council and Maya's blood kin, the Redferns.

"You can't help me, Tasi." She replied.

Tasi leant back in her chair, communicating silently with her vampires who lurked at the threshold. Alex watched as surprise momentarily arch her brows.

"I can scarcely believe it, darling." Tasi laughed, utterly false. "There has never been a time we have not known you as Pope's creature, surely he is not happy."

"I don't care what Pope does or does not think." She said through her teeth.

Wide smile. "It's incredible. You will of course prove this in a public demonstration."

Alex cocked her head to the side.

More laughter. "Why you must make some sort of declaration. It is simply what we do, dear once a child forsakes their father."

"He was no father of mine."

Nervous laughter. "Yes, well. You best be careful, you are more vulnerable now than ever you have been. But of course, should you be looking for a clutch, my doors are always open."

She glanced behind her, the simple room with its one desk and two chairs, deep in the bowels of an unassuming building on the outskirts of town. The power had shifted and Tasi's invitation was not something she would be accepting.

*

Alex was driven to the bay and left to continue her wandering. Tasi words didn't sit well with her, she would have to conduct a public demonstration to sever her ties from Pope. She would have to return to Draconi so he could tell her what it was to be a vampire. She had no clue what it would demand of her.

She looked at the dark waters that held the blood and meat of Cal Radford and his death weighed heavy on her conscious. This served to distract her for a little while.

"Beautiful night, eh girl?"

She knew it was Cuervo before he'd even stepped up behind her. She didn't bother to turn to him. "You don't want to do this tonight, Cuervo."

"We've missed you." He said, his breath hot on her ear. "Come take a walk with me."

Even as he spoke she felt the hunger come across her. Why not take a…walk. She felt no danger, she saw an opportunity. Her hands curled into fists as she smelt the sour scent of alcohol on his tongue and the oil of his gun, the same gun he had used to pushed into her mouth.

He took hold of her arm and she remained relaxed beneath his grip allowing him to lead her into the darkness and beyond. He was taking her somewhere secluded. That was good. She didn't want to be interrupted when she tore his throat out.

He threw her against some chicken wire and she bounced back to her feet so fast it shocked him. He fell back a step and a gun materialised in his hand. "What was that?"

"I did warn you, didn't I?" She said.

"Just one more step, girl and I'll blow you're fucking head off."

Alex smiled.

"Pope has revoked his protection and as far as the Tribunal is concerned you're now fair game and lucky for both of us I found you first." She knew his thoughts, knew them better now because his mind was utterly exposed her.

He had base and cruel things in mind, things he had been wanting to do to her since she had first come onto the scene.

"You've always thought me an enemy, Cuervo." She walked steadily toward him. "We've only ever wanted the same thing."

"You have no idea what I want."

Of course by this time she knew him through and through. The women whispered secrets in her mind, unravelling his soul before her eyes until she could see his naked, quivering need. She slowly unzipped her jacket.

"What are you doing?"

"I know what you want." The voices whispered.

He held the gun up, aiming it at her head, no one would recover from a head shot. She put her hands up to calm him down but now her fangs were jutting beneath her top lip and her eyes had begun to reflect the lights of the streets.

"What are you?" He asked, features twisted in disgust.

He was already squeezing the trigger when Draconi appeared, he took hold of Cuervo's neck and twisted it violently. The snap of his neck and gun cracked at the same instant, the bullet sailing harmlessly upward.

Draconi threw him to the ground.

Alex was mesmerised by the sight.

"Is this what you want, Sarima?" He snarled eyes anger bright in the lamplight.

"My name is Alexandra Burrows."

"You will always be Sarima."

True and not true. Alex frowned, having had been the Sarima and yet she was not the Sarima at all. Draconi knew nothing of Alex Burrows and she in turn knew truly very little of the ancient creature smouldering before her.

She touched him, cool fingertips on his bloodstained cheek. "You have no idea why you've come back to me, do you? What did you expect to do once you cursed me with immortal life?"

He darted forward in a sudden movement, a hand closed around her throat crushing her trachea. Simply mad and precise with anger she could feel her bones bending beneath his grip. "Perhaps I sought you out to kill you once and for all."

He released her.

"You radiate guilt." She murmured. "You watched Ea as they tore her apart and some human part of you was stripped."

He grasped her hands and pushed them away from him. "I am not human."

"We were once."

He stared at her intensely.

"You've killed me once already." She touched her throat. "What more can you do to me now?"


	25. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty Four**

"Nergal." She mumbled in her sleep.

In her minds eye she could see Nergal in his true form and he vibrated with malevolent mirth. Skin a toxic green, oozing with pustules and black poison blood. His teeth as large as knives, as sharp as needles dripping with saliva.

He was this and he was also those she had known him to be: Gideon Parasyn, Sybil Wilbur, Tony Gavet and even her father, Alexander Burrows. He was the once worshipped god of the underworld, the bringer of war, pestilence, fever and devastation. He was brother to Apollyon. The lover of Agrat-bat-mahlaht.

She felt their lives intertwined, as surely as Draconi was the other part of her soul. And she Nergal's cruel gnarled hand wrap around Draconi's throat like a chord and with a great cry she sat up.

Nergal had found his perfect host. "Draconi."

She was once again on the silken sheets, her head filled with sheer panic. The room had been refreshed since she had left half of it black and singed. She turned to find Draconi was no longer beside her.

He had taken her back to his private apartments that night and they had violent sex as if they could work the frustrations of their memories on one another's flesh. Vampires healed fast, that was what Alex learnt that night.

Trembling, she picked up some of the clothes that were strewn about the room and headed for the door. Canis stood as if ready for her, staring blandly. "Draconi?" She asked for softly.

"The master is gone." He replied.

She nodded and pushed past him..

"This came for you, mistress." He held out a crisp white envelope.

"I'm not your mistress, Canis." She said taking hold of the envelope.

"Of course." He bowed by way of apology.

She opened it carefully whilst he waited beside her in perfect silence. The paper was unsigned and formal, the words hardly worth reading. Pope had acknowledged their separation and rescinded all protection from her person, cancelled all her allowances and routs of travel. She let out a shaky breath.

This was proof of her freedom from Pope but now she was prey. Pope could have her hunted for sport but didn't think he would do it. The Tribunal would be more likely to order her be hunted and Pope wouldn't be above dropping a hint to them to do it.

"I have to go." She said softly to Canis who gave another bow.

She made a quick journey to Cal's apartment where she had her files backed up on a usb pen drive she had wedged between the mattress and the bed. From there it didn't take her long to find her way back to Tasi's encampment, she had not taken pains to conceal her whereabouts from Alex and Alex hoped this was deliberate on Tasi's behalf. It was not long before she sat before Tasi once again who looked almost overnight more aged and exhausted than before.

"Do you bring me news, Alexandra?" She asked with a forced smile.

"The Tribunal have sanctioned my execution." She pushed the pen drive toward Tasi. "Here are the details I have on their movement in the city and where your territories clash. They'll target your people, no doubt trying to get to me. This is a friendly warning as there has been an understanding between us."

Tasi closed her fingers around the plastic staring at her clenched fist before looking up to meet Alex's eyes. "Then I suppose I owe you something in return, Alexandra."

Alex shrugged.

Tasi sighed and debated inwardly with whether to disclose her information. She began to talk after sucking in a great mouthful of air. "Becoming a vampire is more complicated that the mechanism of the dark rebirth. There are rules, Alexandra and someone has broken those rules in making you. The Council will also have a warrant for your arrest leading to a formal execution unless of course your maker is willing to bring a case forward before the Elders."

Alex shook her head, Draconi was not likely to make a case for her survival before any one. He wasn't a vampire who played by the rules, gliding above and beneath the radar of the Night.

"Even then many will not allow you to live, what with your connections to Pope. If you do not have permission and your maker can not stand to convince the Council then within two weeks there will be assassins dispatched to eliminate both you and your maker."

Now without Pope's protection, without anonymity from the Night World, and Nergal's presence she was a target for everybody and everything. She had been prepared for this, but then she was only one being, a needle in a haystack.

"However."

Alex hung on her words but Tasi's mouth formed a malevolent smile.

"However, there is a Circle amongst the spell casters who revere all life and accept all allies to their cause. They preach peace and wish to forget the Burning Times, as you can imagine they've been a thorn in our side for many years." She drummed her nails on the table surface as she spoke, nose wrinkled in distaste at the thought of them. "They raise half breeds, accept humankind without charging a fee and they do not allow murder etc etc."

Alex had heard of such things but had never looked into it. "Do they have a name? A location?"

"They call themselves Circle Daybreak. They're based in Vegas, represented by a powerful vampire; though it is not common knowledge. His name is Lord Descourdres. Thierry Descourdres."

Her thoughts drifted to the brief encounter with Maya. I have business in Las Vegas. She laughed under her breath. "Thank you, Tasi."

"I'll miss you, princess."

She turned back to glimpse the vampire woman. Her eyes were large and liquid and she felt a chill as if those words held portents.

She offered a wan smile and left.

*

Alex knocked on Draconi's door and listened to the sound of approaching foot steps. As expected Canis opened the door, his expression grave as his set eyes on her face. "The master is busy, he does not want to admit visitors at present."

"I am not a visitor." Alex said mildly and forced the door open wide.

Canis' eyes widened but he tried to remain firm. "I am sorry, but the master-"

She took him by his throat and felt his delicate parts grind beneath her palm, she raised him off the floor and her eyes became orbs as bright as lava. "Where is he?"

Canis stuttered and trembled uselessly before confessing and she released him, he slid down the wall. She marched through the apartment, pulled irresistibly by the toxic cord that bound them, spilling from her solar plexus to his and back again.

She came upon a room layered in smoke and veils like a harem quarter in a sultan's palace. She parted the curtains and veils, eyes adjusting to the reams of smoke that clogged the den. There were several human women draped in various stages of undress.

Draconi reclined somewhere in the midst of it all, shining like a pearl. Dark hair and bright purple eyes standing out beneath human flesh and the mist of smoke.

Alex took a bold step forward and several pairs of eyes sluggishly turned toward her. She gave the women such a look that sent them reaching for their discarded clothes and stumbling toward the exit.

When they had gone Draconi sat up, his vision cleared to encompass the sight of her, blood still fresh on his lips.

"What do you want?" His voice dripped venom.

The violence that had been in him had not yet subsided, he would harbour his hatred for a long time to come, she knew. Seeing Maya had sent him spiralling, glutting on blood and flesh as if he were a younger vampire.

"You're in trouble."

"This is not a word I know."

She glared at him. Couldn't deny the sliver of jealousy that ran through her. "We need to talk."

"I am through talking."

"Then listen." He bared his teeth in a snarl.

She told him about Pope, about Tasi and what she had said. She spoke of the Circle that had risen in the West. She explained her dream, the demon wanting to possess him like he had possessed Cal. She told him everything and he stared impassively at her.

"Let the demon come." He hissed.

She grasped his smooth chin in her fingers and forced him to look at her. "Nergal wants you, Draconi, he will plunder your soul to possess your body."

He was frozen by her touch and she was all too aware of the sensation of his skin beneath hers. It was too intimate. She let go and stepped away.

"You're afraid, Sarima." He said softly.

"Alex." She corrected. "You should be afraid, Draconi."

"I am afraid of nothing."

"The last demon you tangled with, Prince, cost you your mortality."

He hissed, a hollow reptilian sound. She thought of Cal, the last victim of Nergal and how she had ended committing chunks of his flesh to the salty waters of San Francisco bay. She closed her eyes and summoned every shred of energy from deep inside herself to say one word: "Please."

He smiled slowly, showing fangs and malice and Alex shivered. For all the vampiric strength she now possessed, Draconi was a honed weapon, a being of incredible magic. For all the memories and magic that flowed through her now she could not harm Draconi. She knew this as surely as the oily black chord pulsed between them.

He had saved her from Nergal and she could not let Nergal have him now.

"You thought I would just accompany you to the desert as you pleased?" He did not look at her in the time he spoke.

"Yes." She replied honestly feeling anxious at the set of his shoulders.

He laughed under his breath but there were beasts in that sound, echoes of terrible suffering. "I do not know Alexandra Burrows."

She sat down suddenly, watching her fingers lock together, the unnatural pallor of her skin the veins running with stolen blood. She was not human anymore. Not really Alexandra Burrows. Maybe she never had been.

"You know me, Draconi." She said softly. "Know me enough to trust what I'm saying is true. I have never deceived you."


	26. Chapter 25

_For anyone who reads my profile you may already know I didn't like the end. Badly paced etc etc. I'm re-writing it a bit just to extend the story and make a more sense of the end so it can lead into Samsara: The Bride which is now being put up. Big thanks to anyone with time to take a look at my fics._

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

Alex wandered most of the time in a daze, exhausted by Draconi's bitter arguments. Why fly by plane when he could fly himself? The flight to Vegas would prove long, she feared.

The other passengers stared at her now and at Draconi beside her. Curious and compelled by the glamour they exude. Though she tried to appear normal, relaxed, trying not to study the passenger's peculiarities, to see if they were spies, if they were listening as she was on their intimate thoughts.

Soon the voices began to sing softly in her mind, lulling her into a deep and dreamless sleep, her head fell on Draconi's shoulder. She felt his body stiffen and then relax as the plane took off and the awful scent of plane food snacks and carbonated drinks filled her nostrils.

Her dreams shifted to memories as the plane was rocked by turbulence. She found herself on the rocks of a hidden waterfall and she and Draconi were making love. Her eyes had been closed then but in her dream she opened her eyes.

His face a brilliant vision above hers, teeth suddenly sharp, eyes bleeding perfect spheres of impenetrable black. A long serpent tongue lolled and flicked out to taste her skin. Soon, a voice promised and it was Nergal's voice oozing from Draconi's mouth.

A sigh escaped her lips and she opened her eyes to the artificial light of the plane. Draconi was no longer beside her and she was immediately possessed by panic so keen it made her shudder.

She un-strapped herself and walked the narrow isle toward the bathroom. Occupied.

She knew he'd be in there and forced the door open with only a little effort. Draconi dropped the woman and she landed with an unceremonious thud. His mouth was a slash of bright crimson and she closed the bathroom door behind her.

Alex's jaw began to tremble with fury and she slapped him hard about the face. "That was a mistake."

His hand darted forward toward her throat but her senses amplified by anger, she caught his wrist and squeezed hard, feeling his bones grind beneath her hand. "Let's face Nergal first and then you can have your fill of blood."

He kissed her, the tang of blood invading her mouth as surely as his tongue. She groaned at both the taste of blood and the pressure of his lips. He infected her mind and it was her soul, the chords so tightly bound, the yearning of the Sarima and her own treacherous lust.

She pushed him away.

He was smiling, showing his fangs, eyes swirling with magic.

"Don't touch me." She warned. "Ever."

"You'll regret it."

"What are you talking about?" She hissed between clenched teeth, her temper suddenly rising. Easier to turn to anger.

"Are you sure you're ready to find what you're looking for?" He asked his eyes intense, she felt trapped by them. They spoke of things she could not comprehend and yet she was on the cusp of discovering it all, teetering on the brink of something terrifying.

"I'll deal with it." She whispered.

*

The City was hot, Alex's skin felt as if It were slowly being teased off the ones, one cell at a time. Draconi wore a heavy duster coat to protect his skin from the onslaught of the sun, dark glasses veiled his eyes and she held onto his arm to steady her pace.

She could feel her heart beating in her throat, fear and desire mixed up inside her tearing her focus this way and that.

"It'll get easier." Draconi murmured knowingly.

She grit her teeth and they went on to the hotel to check in. This was done smoothly and quickly and soon she was shut inside the cool bathroom, irritated by the whirr of the air conditioning unit but luxuriating in a tub of ice cold water.

There was a knock at the door. "The sun's going down."

She submerged herself in water and visions of the great waterfall hidden deep in the Sarima's mountain made her blush and emerge to take lungfuls of air.

She emerged slowly, wiping her body down gingerly, cringing at the feel of the stiff fibres on her skin. So sensitive to everything, she could get lost in the merest sensation because it was impossibly amplified now that she was no longer human.

She dressed slowly, deliberately taking her time to steel herself. Tonight they would hunt together, they would find Maya and she would find Circle Daybreak, the latter of which Draconi knew nothing about.

"The mountains are a fair distance-" She was saying whilst knotting her hair on top of her head.

"We'll run." She was startled to have his voice by her ear, he was standing suddenly beside her where a moment ago there was no one in the sealed bathroom.

He smiled showing sharp teeth.

_Run?_ They left the hotel as a normal couple, Alex flesh creeping at each step they made closer to the desert sands, closer to the moon and the call of the blood. Draconi suddenly took hold of her wrist and pulled her forward into a sudden jet of wind.

He moved like liquid. His feet barely touched the floor and she allowed her instincts to take over where her mind could not function. They were running but it was no ordinary sprint, it was the movement of the hunt.

She could feel Draconi's pleasure through the link that bound them and she gripped a little tighter to his hand. She could feel his skin tremble with the desire to change.

Draconi was limited by Alex's inability to change the form of her body. It has taken him aeons to learn but was the most freeing and natural expression his body could take. Alex had been silent as they journeyed to this point.

Before dawn broke they stood together in the shade of a mountain, an eerie memory crawled its way up from the pit of his psyche and from the periphery of his sight the Sarima's face shimmered on Alex's silhouette.

The caves were black rock, damp and ominous. Gaping like mouths to some unknown depth. There was a terrible dank chthonic stench speaking of ancient beasts and the promise of the abyss. This place had the smell of the dead about it.

"There." Alex pointed at a dark clad body crouching on a precipice. A lookout. "She's posted guards to the entrance."


	27. Chapter 26

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

Alex watched as Draconi swooped down on the darkly dressed figure crouched on the side of the mountain. She watched his head arch, fangs glint like daggers and disappear into the flesh of the creature with a chilling ripping sound.

Blood sprayed hot against the black rock and Alex fought not to get distracted by the slivers of meaty flesh and blood dumped on the ground like offerings. She moved slowly, deliberately to stand beside him, her fingers were already reaching to this red mouth taking the blood to her hand and staring at it, tempted by it. The slither of voices urging her to drink, others warring telling her to run.

"She's inside." Draconi spoke and broke the spell. She wiped her hand on her jeans and forced her eyes to the dark hanging mouths of the caves.

Through the link of Maker and child, Draconi knew where Maya was which would be better than Alex fumbling in the semi-dark tunnels. Her vision more clear now than it ever had been but somehow, the strong sense of de-ja-vu made her tremble and hesitate.

"_I'm not like other vampires. I'm the first, my darling. I'm the original…"_

Her eyes met Draconi's glowing pair as they heard the echo of Maya's voice.

Draconi burst into a sprint and Alex followed clumsily after him into the dark.

The echoes of the cave were hard on her ears and she had to pause to recover when they became too terrible to bear. Worse than the echoes of Maya's speech was the screams emanating from inside her own skull.

"_I hope you won't be too lonely. By the way, I wouldn't rock the pole too much. This is an abandoned silver mine, and that whole structure is unstable."_

Through the connection that bound them together she felt the flutter of Draconi's emotion, she knew he had come across his Maker before Alex had even seen them together.

She followed that link to a discreet opening where she could see the ancient lovers' profiles as they stared at one another in poignant silence.

Draconi stared at Maya with such tenderness it could only provoke Alex's jealousy and so she stood watching from the shadows, too frightened to speak, to interrupt the moment unfolding. One hand clinging to the cold icy rock, feeling her bones creek from the pressure of her grip.

Maya's eyes were wild. Black. Unforgiving. Her mouth opened and the ancient, vicious teeth leered at him and she began to lunge.

Maya was quick but Alex was faster, fuelled by pure hatred and profound panic. Draconi stood immobile as Alex tackled Maya, pinning the queen to the ground, her hands tight around her throat. Maya bucked and hissed and was ready to overthrow Alex.

"Enough." Draconi spoke softly.

The resolve that had fuelled Alex's grip slowly drained at the sound of his soft spoken command. The Sarima's venom evaporated. The panic though, did not ease. She was scared for Draconi but she could not defy his soft spoken command.

She released Maya who slowly collected herself to stand.

Alex used the rock to help her stay on her feet. She concentrated on her reflex to breath but it offered no comfort.

Draconi approached Maya in slow measured steps. His focus seemed to narrow to the dark haired vampire and nothing else. Maya let out a rich, melodic rumble of laughter. She had always enjoyed winning.

Alex closed her eyes because she couldn't witness the betrayal again. The melancholy of the Sarima made her bones ache just as the anger of Agrat-bat-mahlaht seemed to warm the air currents about her. She turned and made a zigzag path out of the caverns.

*

"I knew you'd come." Maya said rolling to her feet with feline grace.

Draconi's face became as smooth and unreadable as stone.

Her face suddenly became more lovely, flushed with new life, adapting to become more enticing. Like the first night she had wandered into the light of his camp fire, lit by the lies of stolen blood. It seemed cheap to him now. She had won him with tricks.

"I always knew you'd come back." He watched her oil slick eyes transition through the colours of the rainbow, mutating from green to blue to the purple of his own eyes.

"You've lost." He said softly. So soft she thought she hadn't heard it.

She cocked her head to one side. "Draconi?"

"He never wanted you, Maya, he still doesn't want you."

She paused and forced a smile. "I don't understand."

Draconi's teeth slipped to his bottom lip, his eyes began to glow, lit with an inner magic and anger. He had to come here, he had to see this, he knew why Alex had brought him here to confront his past to claim back his future. "You've lost everything."

She growled indelicately.

He stepped intimately close to her, taking in the scent of her, the feel of her before him.

"You will not speak this way to me."

His hand reached out to caress her neck and she relaxed beneath his kneading hand until his grip tightened painfully and her eyes were black as sin. "You used to have power over me. Now I am stronger than even you, Queen of Thieves."

She screamed and he let her go.

"Don't you dare turn your back on me, Draconi." She screamed. "I made you."

Draconi didn't turn back to look at her.


	28. Chapter 27

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

Alex Burrows walked with her head down, dragging her feet in the dirt and wallowing in her defeat.

What did you fucking expect? A voice slithered from her mind. That he would choose you over Maya?

Angry, she hadn't expected the strength of emotion gathered inside her, didn't know that she had any true feeling for Draconi beyond those in her memories. She felt possessive, drawn, sucked into the vortex of his being because she belonged to him.

She stopped, leaning on cool rock to collect her wits. She could hear movement through the caves.

Her head snapped to the side the instant she sensed it. Nergal. Like an unmistakable scent or sound she knew he was there. Her body tuned to his dark magic now, she changed her course, moving toward the icy feel of him.

Inevitably she had come across one of the strangers trooping through the dark. He was dressed in black, and she was unable to see his face, unable to get a sense of him. Masked by scents and sights, padding and weapons. He was a hunter. She was possessed by wild trembling, unable to focus her vision ready to fall onto the blade pointed at her throat.

The sword clattered to the ground, the hunter was suddenly suspended by a toxic black smoke. Nergal's laugh accompanied the crack of the hunter's broken neck. The body fell inanimate to the floor.

_I knew you'd come. _Nergal whispered. _I knew you'd bring the vampire too. I've watched you for oh so long._

She was overwhelmed with a sense of Nergal, icy deep and terrifying. She was made vulnerable by all that surrounded her, ready to give up and give in and the near sightless smoke approached her and she tumbled backwards.

Nergal rushed at her and she was battered by the icy feel of him. Demon of the underworld, Sovereign of ancient cities and god of ancient peoples. She was made deaf, dumb and blind.

When the storm had passed she found Draconi's silhouette standing over her and relief keen and pacifying swept through her being. He came back and then the next thought… "No." She said tremulously. "Go away. This is what he wanted."

Draconi's was unimpressed. "I've had enough." He said and reached to take her hand. "We're leaving."

"No." She said moving farther back still.

Nergal familiar presence seemed to possess the vast network of caves making their location all at once too intimate. Draconi's head suddenly reeled back and a grunt escaped him, Nergal's spirit forcing itself into the nooks and cranny's of Draconi's being and it momentarily quickened his shrivelled heart to beating.

Alex closed her eyes, unable to watch, feeling the phantom of all Draconi felt through their link. As if a fist had been rammed into her midsection, pulverising her insides. It hurt. The link they shared felt as if it were being hacked and gnawed on.

It was over in moments and Alex, sick and gasping turned to face Draconi.

The look he gave was at once horrible and irresistible and not Draconi at all. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

*

Alex had felt this sense of dread before, the time Nergal had slithered into the flesh of Cal Radford.

She tried to scramble to her feet but Draconi was a well honed weapon at Nergal's command and he had hold of her. He pushed her hard against the rock, his hands all over her, ripping at her clothes, forced her legs apart.

"No." She tried to resist, raking skin from his face, his body but found it had little impact. She had lost. She could not beat Nergal and probably never could.

"I have dreamt of this." Nergal whispered in Draconi's voice.

A whimper crawled out of her throat.

When he penetrated her she thought of pestilence, famine, wars, darkness. She was inundated with images of suffering. He fucked her as if to seek a secret or absolution. Cementing and christening his birth into her flesh.

And she saw the stories in his mind, the demon king of Kutha, his lust for Agrat, the beloved Bride of his master. The master he had come to loathe. But she was not Agrat, not the Sarima, not any of the other banshees howling through her mind. She was Alexandra Burrows.

And Alexandra Burrows never just gave up.

"Draconi," she murmured in his ear and felt the magic threads of her soul seeking his.

The pulsing cord that had beat between them becoming a fluid tunnel where all that she was flowed into him and all that was his into her. It was an indescribable feeling. She surrendered herself to the link having nothing and nowhere to hide now and the fullness of the magic consumed her.

The union of soul mates made Nergal's presence obsolete. Locking him out.

Alex and Draconi broke the kiss, his body slipping away from hers and he was Draconi again. She could see it in his eyes. The same eyes that had stared into the face of the Sarima as he made love to her on the rocks of Yaham.

They stood, staring at one another. His look was almost tender and silent tears continued to leak from her eyes.

"Alex." He whispered.

Blood erupted from between his lips, dark and oily black blood.

He fell to his knees in front of her and she saw Pope standing behind him. Pope's gloved hand posed as if he had stabbed him and of course he had. Alex could see the bone dagger hilt protruding from Draconi's back.

There was a terrible howling coming from deep within his chest. A garbled, grunting, animalistic snarl as Nergal was dragged from inside Draconi's body. The amorphous dark mist that was Nergal without flesh appeared for a moment threatening to bear down on them with terrible vengeance, shadow needle point teeth and poison lolling tongue. Alex grasped Draconi just that little bit harder, ready to scream but Nergal simply disappeared.

"You son of a bitch." She hissed at Pope who was smiling fondly at her, his eyes dancing with flames.

"That should take care of your pesky demon problem."

Alex pulled the bone knife from Draconi's back. She had seen this knife before, she had held it in her hand before, had fallen upon it once, it was the Sarima's dagger. "Taken from the bones of Yam-Nahar first born amongst dragons." Pope said for her.

She chucked the dagger to the dirt as if it disgusted her. She wanted no part of it.

"Of course I couldn't have pinned him down without your help, darling. I knew he'd follow you to the ends of the earth or Vegas at least." Pope smiled. "I suppose I owe you a thank you but then he wouldn't be here in the first place if it weren't for you."

Alex was listening to Pope but her eyes were on Draconi's wound. The gouge was slowly knitting together becoming a mere scratch, fascinated and compelled she gently touched his bare skin, the contact ignited invisible sparks and she took her hand back.

Draconi's eyes were at half mast but he was strong enough to stand, his mouth slack and dark with his own blood that had frothed up from his lungs.

"What do you mean?" She hissed.

"Nergal was the least of the Fallen." Pope said fixing the wisps of hair about his scalp. "You can imagine how irritating marshalling minor demons can be."

Draconi hissed, his body too feeble from the knife wound to create a real threat. Pope merely laughed. Pope used his handkerchief to wipe the ash from his fingertips. "It wouldn't do to let a petty scoundrel like Nergal get away with theft of His Bride, eh?"

Alex simply stared, there was no room for words.

"I have tried and I have tried." Pope said irritably a distasteful eye setting on Draconi. "Lifetime after lifetime of these tedious reunions. Don't you understand darling that this creature can only hurt you? All he has ever done is delay the inevitable and now…well now he's put you in an extremely difficult situation."

Alex looked from Pope to Draconi and back again. Lifetime after lifetime. She was chilled to the bone with the thought of the two meddling in her life…lives. Knowing more of her than she knew herself.

"But you, boy have a care and remember who she is." The intensity in Pope's stare made Alex flinch but Draconi stood to his full height, his expression severe and unfazed. "She does not belong to you."

"Pope." Draconi said with a stinging glare. "Go to hell."

**End of Part One**


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